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New Testament Heralds

Written by Rick Shrader

New Testament Heralds

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the Spring 2003 (Vol 13, No. 1) issue of The Baptist Preacher’s Journal

Introduction

Perhaps the most seldom used title in the Bible for the minister is “Preacher.”  It translates the noun form of the word kerux (kerux) which means “a herald.”  Though the English word “Preacher” appears four times, one time (Rom 10:14) is actually a verb, and another (2 Pet 2:5) refers to Noah, an Old Testament character.  So the title “Preacher,” referring to the New Testament minister is only used by the Apostle Paul to describe himself.  Once in 1 Timothy 2:7 and again in 2 Timothy 1:11, Paul says that God ordained him to be a preacher.

The job of a herald was a duty-oriented job.  He was employed by a king to announce what the king gave him.  He could not alter the announcement to fit his own whims.  It was the message of the king and it must be delivered exactly as it was given.  The herald was not a Groucho Marx who used to say, “Those are my principles!  And if you don’t like them . . . . well, I have others.”  No, these were the king’s principles.

The disciples were often asked to perform tasks like a herald.  All four gospels include the story of the triumphal entry when Jesus commanded two of His disciples to go into Jerusalem and untie someone else’s donkey and bring it to Jesus.  If the owner asked why they were taking his donkey, they were to reply with the exact words of Jesus: ”the Master has need of them.”  Mark records that the two disciples said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go (Mark 11:6).  The king’s words would be the authority for the herald’s words.   Similarly, in Acts chapter nine, Ananias was commanded to go to Saul, put his hands on him, call him “brother,” and say that Jesus had send him.  The words of Jesus would be enough to overcome Ananias’s fear of the former persecutor.  He found it to be so.  Heralds are not merely witnesses who tell what they have seen.  Neither are they instructors who elaborate on the material being presented.  They are more like stewards who are responsible for what has been placed in their hands.

Though the word kerux (kerux) appears only three times as a proper noun (“preacher”), it appears a number of times as the action (”preaching”) and sometimes as the message (“the thing preached”).  Kittel’s Theological dictionary devotes 35 pages to its definition.  There are some clear observations concerning a herald:  1) Every king had one.  It was his ordained means of getting a message to the people.  2) They were untouchable.  If someone attacked the messenger, he would suffer punishment as if he had attacked the king himself.  3) They were sworn to exactness.  Gerhard Friedrich, writing the article in Kittel’s, says, “It is demanded then, that they deliver their message as it is given to them.  The essential point about the report which they give is that it does not originate with them.  Behind it stands a higher power.  The herald does not express his own views.  He is the spokesman for his master.”[i]

According to Kittel’s, the Greeks recognized three heralds:  1) Hermes was the interpreter of the gods.  In Lystra (Acts 14), Paul was called Hermes (Mercurius) because he was the chief speaker (vs 12).  2) Birds were considered messengers of the gods, especially the rooster who announced the new day and various watches of the night.  3) The philosophers were considered heralds and called “messengers” with the word angelos (angelos). This is why the New Testament pastors can be called “angels” and it was understood as heralds.  Paul wrote to the Galatians, you received me as an angel of God (Gal 4:14).  In Revelation 2-3, Christ gives His message to the “angels” of the churches and when they deliver the message, the Holy Spirit applies it to whomever has ears to hear.

In the book of 2 Timothy, Paul uses all three forms of the word “Herald.”  In 1:11 he writes of the kerux (kerux), the preacher, messenger.  In 4:2 he writes of the keruso (kerusso), the preaching, or messages.  Then in 4:17 he talks of the kerygma (kerygma), the thing preached, the subject of the message itself.

 

I. The Preacher (the Messenger)

2 Tim. 1:11 Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.

The apostle Paul tells Timothy that he was “appointed” to this high office by the Lord.  This is the word Jesus used when He said to Paul, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth (Acts 13:47).  Again, Paul says, But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts (2 Thes 2:4).

First, God’s herald doesn’t have to be a great man, but he does have to be a man of God. Paul again says to Timothy, But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness (1 Tim 6:11).  I don’t believe great men ever wanted to be great, they just wanted to be men of God and God used them in great ways.  One problem today in our ministerial schools is that we are teaching young men to want to be great men without first being men of God.  Vance Havner wrote, “What our forefathers were without knowing it, we want to know without being it.”[ii] Savonarola said, “In the primitive church the chalices were of wood and the prelates were of gold; today the prelates are of wood and the chalices are of gold.”[iii]

A tourist group, visiting birth-places of famous people, passed through a European village. One of the tourists asked a local man standing on a corner, “Were there any famous leaders born in this village?”  “No,” the man replied, “Just babies.”  Sometimes young people want the things of greatness without paying the price of greatness.  John Bunyan was born into a tinker’s home—one of the lowest status occupations of the time.  But Bunyan became a man of God and a powerful preacher.  Armitage tells that, “John Owen heard him preach, probably at Zoar Chapel, and when King Charles expressed wonder that a man of his [Owen’s] learning could bear to listen to the ‘prate’ of a tinker, he answered, that he would gladly give all his learning for this tinker’s power.”[iv] Bunyan titled his autobiography, “Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners.”  If more of us would desire to be known as the Chief of Sinners, rather than the Chief Executive Officer, we might have more power with God.

George Whitefield cried, “O, grant I may, like a pure crystal, transmit all the light Thou pourest over me, and never claim as my own what is thy sole property”[v] J. Vernon McGee tells about G.Campbell Morgan’s call to the ministry:

“Dr (G. Campbell) Morgan tells how he wrestled with this problem of calling.  He was a school teacher when he was called as a minister.  It was a very solemn moment for him.  He felt that the Lord was saying to him, ‘You have been set apart definitely for the ministry of the Word.  Now do you want to be a great preacher or do you want to be my servant?’  The first thought that Dr. Morgan had was, ‘I want to be a great preacher.’    That ought to be a wonderful ambition, but after a while the Lord began to press it in upon him, ‘Do you want to be a great preacher, or do you want to be my servant?’  Finally Dr. Morgan came to it.  He saw that he had to make a choice.  Finally he said, ‘Oh blessed Lord, I would rather be Thy servant than anything else.’”[vi]

Second, God’s herald must have the mind of Christ, not the mind of the world. Paul was insistent on this qualification for a minister of Christ.  For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Tim. 1:7 ) Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; (2 Cor. 3:5 ) For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:16)  It was Demas who had the mind of the world.  For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; (2 Tim 4:10).  God’s heralds cannot be as Jannes and Jambres, men of corrupt minds (2 Tim 3:8).  Friedrich says, “Heralds adopt the mind of those who commission them, and act with the plenipotentiary [full power] authority of their masters.  It is with this authority that the kerux (kerux) conducts diplomatic business.”[vii]

Our authority as preachers of the gospel comes from the Spirit of God within us!    That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us (2 Tim 1:14).  R.C. Sproul wrote, “We can be skilled preachers without the Spirit.  We can be theological geniuses after the flesh.  We can be silver-tongued orators apart from grace.  But the only source of the fruit of the Spirit is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.”[viii] Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “To me there is nothing more terrible for a preacher than to be in the pulpit alone, without the conscious smile of God.”[ix]

John describes the preacher with the worldly mind contrasted with the preacher with the mind of Christ:  They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.  We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.  Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error (1 John 4:5-6).  Too many of God’s ministers are busy winning themselves to the world rather than winning the world to Christ.  It is because they have the mind of the world.

Old A.C. Dixon helped formulate the “Fundamentals” that gave us our name at the turn of the last century.  He had pastured both Spurgeon’s Tabernacle and Moody Memorial Church.  He writes,

“Every preacher is, or ought to be, a prophet of God who preaches as God bids him without regard to results.  When he becomes conscious of the fact that he is a leader in his church or denomination, he has reached a crisis in his ministry.  Shall he be a prophet of God or a leader of men?  If he decides only to be a prophet insofar as he can without losing his leadership, he becomes a diplomat and ceases to be a prophet at all.  If he decides to maintain his leadership at all costs he may easily fall to the level of a politician who pulls the wires to gain or hold a position.  He who would prophesy or speak forth the message of God is careful of none of these things but only that he shall speak the message that God gives him, even though he be in a lonesome minority.”[x]

George Liddell, who helped compile the famous Liddell and Scott Lexicon, wrote,

“Give me a man of God—one man, whose faith is master of his mind, and I will right all wrongs and bless the name of all mankind.

Give me a man of God—one man, whose tongue is touched with heaven’s fire, and I will flame the darkest hearts with high resolve and clean desire.

Give me a man of God—one man, one mighty prophet of the Lord, and I will give you peace on earth, bought with a prayer and not a sword.

Give me a man of God—one man, true to the vision that he sees, and I will build your broken shrines and bring the nations to their knees.”[xi]

 

II. The Preaching (the Messages)

2 Tim. 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

Here Paul exhorts Timothy to action!  Now he is to pay attention to the way in which the message goes forth.  “Herald the Word”  This is the way in which the prophets of old delivered their message.  Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. (Isa 58:1).  Paul wrote, We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; (2 Cor 4:13).  This is one methodology that cannot be changed or amended!

First, the urgency of the situation requires it.  Here our word for “herald” is not only a verb of action, but is in the imperative.  It is a command to preachers of the gospel.  “Be instant” Paul says.  The kerux (kerux) is always ready with the kerusso (kerusso).  Charles Finney was invited to preach for an entire summer at Five Points in Lower Manhattan by Lewis Tappan.  Finney questioned whether they would receive him in such a sinful place.  Tappan replied, “A place admirably located for the destruction of souls is equally well located for conceiving them.”[xii] Finney preached that summer to about 2000 people a night in the Chatham Garden Theater.  Finney describes his method of delivering the message as a herald:

“You breast yourself to the work like a giant.  You open the attack with Jupiter’s thunderbolt.  You take the doctrine for a damning fact—declare you know it—raise your voice—lift high your hand—bend forward your trunk—fasten your staring eyes upon the auditors—declare that they know it to be God’s truth; that they stand upon the brink of hell’s gaping pit of fire and brimstone . . . unless they repent forthwith.”[xiii]

Paul reminded the Corinthians, For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. (2 Cor 2:17).

Second, The message of the King guides it.  It must be “the Word” which the herald proclaims.  When we decide to change it to fit the situation, we have betrayed our King.  D.L. Moody said, “When a minister or a messenger of Christ begins to change the message because he thinks it is not exactly what it ought to be, and thinks he is wiser than God, God just dismisses that man.”[xiv]

By now we all recognize that this is a postmodern society.  We are finding it more and more difficult to speak the message of our King in a straightforward manner.  Our audience has a hard time accepting anything without a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”  They can say one thing and do another.  They can say one thing and believe another.  They can even say one thing and intend another, and they believe all of us are using language and media the same way!  Benjamin Woolley, a postmodern writer, said, “Artificial reality is the authentic postmodern condition, and virtual reality its definitive technological expression . . . . The artificial is the authentic.”[xv] Millard Erickson describes our difficulty in this way:

“I have a T-shirt that I bought from the American Philosophical Association, of which I am a member.  On the front is printed the following: ‘The sentence on the back of this shirt is false.’  On the back, however, this appears:  ‘The sentence on the front of this shirt is true.’  Now it may be possible to believe either the front or the back of the shirt, or to believe both, but at different times.  It is not psychologically possible to believe both at the same time, and in the same respect.  It simply cannot be done, while retaining one’s sanity.”[xvi]

As ministers of Christ, and as heralds of the gospel, we must not let our preaching fall to such a low estate.  Paul said, But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay . . . . For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God (2 Cor 1:18, 20).

 

III. The Preached (the Message itself)

2 Tim. 4:16 through 2 Tim. 4:17 At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. 17Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

Here Paul admonishes Timothy to guard the message that is preached.  This form of the word is our English word “kerygma” (kerygma).  Webster’s dictionary to this day still defines this word as “The apostolic preaching that Jesus is the Christ.”  In the great resurrection chapter of First Corinthians 15, Paul uses this form and the verb form:  Now if Christ be preached (kerusso, kerusso) that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching (kerygma, kerygma) vain, and your faith is also vain (1 Cor 15:12-14).  You can have all the action and commotion in the world, but if you’ve lost the content, it is in vain.

Today we play with symbolism over substance to our detriment.  We are worshiping worship as a substitute for a real Holy Spirit experience.  We have faith in faith rather than the faith once for all delivered to the saints.  We have a kerux (kerux) who is busy with the kerusso (kerusso), but we are quickly losing the most important thing—the kerygma (kerygma)!  Two things are certain from this final chapter of Paul’s life.

First, When you stand by the truth, the Lord will stand by you!  Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching (kerygma, kerygma) might be fully known (verse 17).  Though all his friends had forsaken him, Paul was not forsaken.  When Paul stood at Gallio’s Bema seat in Corinth, the Lord appeared and said to him Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee (Acts 18:9-10).  When he stood before Herod’s Bema seat in Caesarea, the Lord appeared and said to him, Be of good cheer Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome (Acts 23:11).  Now before Caesar’s Bema seat the Lord is there to deliver him from the mouth of the lion.  But Paul was most concerned with appearing before Christ’s Bema seat, Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him (2 Cor 5:9).

Second, When you stand by the truth, the lost will know they should stand by you.  By the faithful proclamation of the truth, the kerygma (kerygma) might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear (verse 17).  There was no “stealth” in Paul’s presentation.  He did not coax them in with one method and then sometime down the road reveal to them what he was really all about!

I hope that at our church we preach the same whether the congregation is full of teens or whether it is full of seniors.  The truth is the most effective tool for them.  Paul wrote to Philemon and wished, That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Phile 6).  Paul knew what was effectual in the preaching of the message.  He reminded the Corinthians,  If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? 24But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 25And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth (1 Cor 14:23-25).

The old song goes:  “Tell me the story softly, with earnest tones and grave; Remember I’m the sinner whom Jesus came to save.  Tell me the story always, if you would really be, in any time of trouble, a comforter to me.”  That is the need of the world!

Third, When you stand by the truth, the Lord will deliver you.  And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion (vs 18).  The Lord may deliver His saints in the way He chooses.  It may be by life or by death.  Either way, He will not let us be devoured by the Lion.  Once when Vance Havner, nearing 80 years old, was speaking to ministerial students, he described his busy life and schedule.  One student said to him, “Why, if we kept that schedule all of the time it would kill us!”  Havner replied, “Who said you can’t die?”  Is not heaven the greatest deliverance from the Lion?  According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.  (Phil 1:20).

 

Conclusion

In his book Twice Told Tales[xvii] Nathaniel Hawthorne writes of the Spring of 1689 and the tensions that had developed in the new country over control from England.  It was a time when “the Puritans were all dead, and the Methodists had not been born.”  Sir Edmond Andros, the king’s hand-picked governor marched his troops through the streets of Boston, slowly approaching the colonists who shrunk from the fearsome militia.  The pastors (who were usually singled out for display as examples) stood protected by their congregants and looked piously from behind the cover.

The rightful governor, Simon Bradstreet, stood far away near the court house steps and gave instructions to the people not to provoke the situation.  Many of the older men remembered when they were young and would have taken action themselves, but now they could only stand aside and hope for stronger wills.  Just then, “the figure of an ancient man, with the eye, the face, the attitude of command appeared on the street, dressed in the old Puritan garb” and began approaching the soldier’s line.  “Stand” the older warrior-saint commanded.  “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, was irresistible.  At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.”  With prophetic accuracy he predicted the deposing of Andros before dark and the turning of the tide of the Glorious Revolution.

“Who was this Gray Champion?”  Hawthorne asked near the end of the story.  “I have heard that whenever the descendents of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.”

In our Baptist movement, and in our Baptist churches, it is time for the spirit of our sires to show themselves again.  Will Elijah’s mantle fall to the ground?  Will no Timothy’s die at the hands of this world for preaching truth?  But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. . . . The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit.  Grace be with you. Amen (2 Tim 4:5,22).

 

[i] Gerhard Friedrich, “Kerux” Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol III (Grand Rapids:  Eerdman’s, 1978) 687-688.
[ii] Vance Havner, From a personal collection of quotations.

[iii] Savonarola, “On the degeneration of the church”  Orations: Homer To Mckinley, vol III, Mayo Hazeltine, ed. (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1902) 1281.

[iv] Thomas Armitage, Baptist History, vol I, (Watertown: Maranatha Baptist Press, 1976) 479.

[v] Quoted by Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1994) 58.

[vi] J. Vernon McGee, II Corinthians (Pasadena: Through The Bible Books, 1981) 59.

[vii] Friedrich, 688.

[viii] R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1990) 165.

[ix] Quoted by Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994)17.

[x] Quoted by Vance Havner, In Times Like These (Old Tappan:  Fleming H. Revell, 1969) 103.

[xi] Quoted by J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971) 15.

[xii] Quoted by Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eeerdman’s, 1966)135.

[xiii] Hambrick-Stowe, 55.

[xiv] D.L. Moody, Spiritual Power (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997) 14.

[xv] Quoted by Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In CyberSpace (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997) 27.

[xvi] Millard Erickson, The Postmodern World (Wheaton: Crossway books, 2002) 85.

[xvii] Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Gray Champion,” Twice Told Tales (New York: The Modern Library, 2001) 3-10.

 

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Richard V. Clearwaters

Written by Rick Shrader

Richard V. Clearwaters

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the October 15, 2001 issue (Vol. 52, No. 3) of The Baptist Bible Tribune.

“There is no tangled skein of life too difficult for His divine fingers if we are willing to cast it into His lap.”1 That was the way Dr. Clearwaters began his autobiography.  From a sharecropper’s home in the Kansas wilderness to a nationally known figure among fundamental Baptists, “it is God’s testimony He is protecting, and not you.”2 For those of us who sat under his ministry, there was never any doubt that he believed that with all of his heart.

Humble Beginnings

Richard Volley Clearwaters was born in Wilmot, Kansas, on June 28, 1900, the fourth child of Guy and Hannah (Poe) Clearwaters.  Four younger children were added to the family but the youngest son died in a farming accident at just ten years old.  It was a hard land and a difficult life in turn-of-the-century Kansas.  In 1901 the territory of Oklahoma was opened for homesteading and the Clearwaters family moved to 160 acres near Nellie.  To qualify one had to be “free” and committed to staying at least five years.  They lived in a dugout with boarded sides and a roof with drains to keep the water out.  It was not until years later that a house was constructed over the existing structure.

Though very young, Clearwaters could recall the one-room schoolhouse with eight grades together, some of the farm boys being twenty years old.  “I was naturally left handed.  Professor Thomas was not satisfied with that, so he tied my left hand behind my back during that exercise, and sure enough, I got so I could write with my right hand.  The trouble was, you couldn’t read either one, the left or the right.”3 Sundays were reserved for church meetings and sometimes “protracted” meetings in a large brush arbor.  Each family brought one lantern for the night meetings and hung them on the poles that supported the roof.  Family altars were expected and Guy always read to the family from the large family Bible.  These things brought conviction, but no conversion would take place until many difficult years later.

In 1907 the Clearwaters family took an emigrant train to Spokane, Washington where they finally purchased an eighty-acre farm (for the sum of $3,000), which had a small house and barn.  Purchasing a near-by sawmill, they were able to build the additional buildings they would need.  After a few years of making the farm into a suitable home for a large family, Guy decided to advertise it for sale.  But upon reviewing the lengthy description of the family farm he remarked to Hannah, “This is just the kind of place I have always wanted!”  The farm is still owned by the Clearwaters family.

The Prodigal Son

When Richard was sixteen, being bored with school, he rolled up a few things in a mackinaw coat and hid them beside the road.  The next morning, rather than going to school, he picked up his belongings and caught a train to Canada.  He was there for five years as a prodigal son.  He slept in flophouses, traveled in boxcars and worked in coal mines and paper mills until he injured his right arm and was hospitalized.  Providentially, the nurse that took care of Richard recognized the family name, being a past friend of the family, and contacted Richard’s mother.  Richard got a letter from his mother who included in the letter the words, “The way of the transgressors is hard” (Prov 13:15).  The words convicted Richard who agreed to come home but only for a short time.  “Prodigal sons form habits, acquire a vocabulary, do things that are not very fitting for a Christian environment.”4

During this time at home, circumstances worked on Richard to bring him to salvation.  The first was a most tragic one.  Richard was driving a large lumber wagon with a team of horses and Weldon, his brother, was riding on the seat next to him.  When Richard stood up to urge the team of horses, Weldon fell off the side under the wagon wheel and was crushed.  He died a day later.  Richard went into a time of great depression as he saw the sorrow his life had brought his parents and family.

The second circumstance that God used to call Richard to salvation is described in the autobiography:

After this experience [the death of Weldon], when I would go back to my window to gaze out into the darkness, the only cheer I could get for my sorrowing soul was the song of the cricket singing in the night.  There was a little brook of water that ran in front of the house, and the frogs and the crickets were the only sounds we heard in the night.  I recall now as I look back at a line in the poem, The Acada by Huxley: “Oh, thou harper of the night.  I heard thy voice and hoped again.”  Imagine someone so depressed that the only joy they could think of was one of the most insignificant of God’s creatures singing in the darkness of the night! . . . To keep me reminded of these days, a metal cricket has adorned my desk for years.  I’ve never killed a cricket since I was saved.5

The third and final circumstance in Richard’s conversion came a year later when a Holiness Methodist Preacher came to hold a two-week revival meeting at the Moran Prairie Methodist Church in Spokane, Washington.  After two weeks no one had been saved and a snowstorm threatened to close the services.  In spite of the difficulties, they decided to continue the meetings one more week.  That week a teenaged girl named Wilma Goodrich and Richard Clearwaters were gloriously saved!

Surprised by Education

Though Richard always considered himself the poorest pupil of the family, his call to the ministry and its preparation was quick and definite.  He heard his mother singing in the kitchen The Ninety and Nine.  When she sang the verse, “I will go to the desert to find my sheep,” the Lord seemed to say to Richard, “Will you go?”  Without hesitation his answer was “Yes!”  He hurried to the cemetery where his brother Weldon was buried and knelt down and said, “Lord, I’m not very much, but what I have and what I am, I’m willing to give to you.  Thank you for salvation.”6

Richard had a brother-in-law who had attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and after consultation with him he decided to go there to begin his training.  He had only been a Christian six weeks and was advised to wait at least six months to determine if this was really God’s will.  He recalls,

You know, there’s nothing more dangerous than for someone to wait when the Lord has talked to them.  The devil can talk you out of it, and he can use born-again Christians to talk you out of it.  He can use someone who loves you very dearly to talk you out of it.  There wasn’t any chance in the world that I would wait six months.  If I had waited six months, I perhaps would never have come into the ministry.7

With $17.20 in his pocket Richard landed at State and Madison streets, to that day, the busiest corner in the world.  He became a dishwasher in the school kitchen and a busboy for about $6.00 a week, enough to make ends meet.  His days at Moody were positive and challenging.  During those years, thanks to R.A. Torrey’s book How To Work For Christ, Richard memorized one tenth of the New Testament.  He learned that a Bible Institute stresses three things that are vital for building churches: the English Bible, gospel music and personal evangelism.  He never forgot those foundational truths throughout the rest of his life as a pastor and educator.  These foundations were strengthened by hearing great men preach such as Robert Dick Wilson, R.A. Torrey, G. Campbell Morgan, Griffith Thomas and Billy Sunday.

From Moody Clearwaters attended Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago when the school was only thirteen years old.  There he heard A.H. Strong, A.T. Robertson, Robert Mantey, James Moffat and H.A. Ironside and graduated with a Th.B and B.D. degrees in 1928..  From there he earned a scholarship to Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1929.  He attended Chicago University and earned an M.A. degree in 1933 under E.J. Goodspeed in New Testament Greek and was a few hours short of a Ph.D when time and money became prohibitive.  In addition, Clearwaters held three honorary  doctorate degrees.

The Early Pastorates

Clearwaters always knew he was called of God to be a pastor.  While a student at Moody he became the pastor of a Federated Church in Wilton Center, Illinois.  He would leave after classes on Friday, have prayer meeting Friday night, visit on Saturday, hold services on Sunday and be back in Chicago for classes on Monday morning.  When he moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Lawton for nine months and then Bethel Baptist Church in Kalamazoo.

While at Bethel Baptist Church he met an R.N. named Florence Welch who worked for the City Health Department.  Clearwaters worked a lot with the indigents during the depression times, and that brought him in contact with many benevolent agencies.  The two were introduced after a chance meeting during a hospital call.  They were engaged but waited a year to marry due to the hard times and busy schedules.  Florence became Mrs. Richard Clearwaters on April 17, 1935.

When schoolwork was done, Clearwaters sought the Lord’s will in finding a permanent pastorate.  He describes how the Lord led him:

I had three opportunities, all were open pulpits.  My covenant was, “Lord, whichever one of these offers me the first open door, that’s where I’ll take it as your will I should go.”  I believe the Lord is more anxious to lead us than we are able to be led.  And usually we miss the Lord’s leading because we are not absolutely surrendered.  If we are surrendered, we are winning souls to Christ—that’s why He saved us, to serve . . . . Cedar Rapids, IA was the first offer.  The church had a six thousand dollar mortgage on a wooden-frame building for which the wrecking company had offered them five hundred dollars . . . . We were immersed there, my wife and I, for four and a half years, in the ministry of preaching the Gospel and evangelism.8

That church was in the American Baptist Convention.  Clearwaters was soon elected President of the Iowa Baptist State Convention. This gave him his first acquaintance with national leaders with whom he would be engaged in the future years.  It was in 1939 that the pulpit committee of the Fourth Baptist Church of Minneapolis contacted Pastor Clearwaters.  During this time Clearwaters had met opposition in the Cedar Rapids church over plans to build.  He took this as God closing the door in Iowa and opening the door in Minnesota.  They accepted the church’s call and moved to Minneapolis on January 1, 1940.

Fourth Baptist Church

The Fourth Baptist Church was organized in 1881 and moved to West Broadway Street in Minneapolis in 1918 where it remained until 1998 when its present pastor, Dr. Douglas McLachlan, relocated the church to the Northwest suburb of Plymouth.  Dr. Clearwaters pastored the church from 1940 until his retirement in 1982.

Fourth Baptist is a member of the Minnesota Baptist Association, which, in 1940, was an adjunct of the Northern Baptist Convention, later to become the American Baptist Convention.  By the 1940s, due to growing concerns of liberalism, a group of fundamentalists, including W.B. Riley, had organized a Fundamental Fellowship within the national convention.  In 1943 the Conservative Baptist Association of America was formed with Dr. R.V. Clearwaters as its first President and Dr. B. Myron Cedarholm as its Executive Secretary.

During these years Clearwaters also served as a trustee of the Northwestern Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, which had been founded (as Northwestern Bible School) by W.B. Riley, pastor of First Baptist Church, in 1900.  Clearwaters and Riley had a close relationship until Riley’s death in 1947 at which time Billy Graham became president of the school.  In 1956 Northwestern discontinued the Seminary and Bible College, which were combined into Northwestern College.

Clearwaters still felt the need for a fundamental seminary and organized Central Baptist Theological Seminary in 1956 with thirty-one students.  It remains today as a leading Fundamental Baptist school with new facilities in Plymouth, Minnesota and under the auspices of Fourth Baptist Church.  Clearwaters also rescued Pillsbury Baptist Bible College from the liberal side of the Convention.  In 1957, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the Minnesota Baptist Association could choose the trustees and officers of the school.  Thus in the same year Clearwaters became President of the college, a position which he held until his retirement.  In 1963, Clearwaters led the Minnesota Baptist Association to withdraw from the Conservative Baptist Association.

As pastor of Fourth Baptist Church, Clearwaters continued to build a large church with a broad ministry.  A Bible Institute was added in 1958, a youth camp in 1963, an FM radio station in 1965, a Christian School in 1966, and in 1973 a 2400 seat auditorium was added to the Broadway Street location.  Dr. Clearwaters simply called these ministries, “the lengthened shadows of a man.”  Many of us in the ministry today benefited from those shadows.

It may be hard to visualize the influence great men of the faith had on fundamental, conservative Christianity.  Speaking of the men who frequented his ministry Clearwaters wrote:

Lowell Thomas said once, “There were giants on the earth in those days.”  I feel I have lived through an era when there were giants on the earth.  One of the blessings I have had is that our home has been blessed with such people staying overnight and for dinner as Dr. Ironside, Gypsy Smith, Homer Rodeheaver, Louie Talbot, Bob Jones, Sr. and many others.9

The Last Years

Dr. Clearwaters retired as pastor of Fourth Baptist Church and as President of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in 1982.  He retired as President of Central Baptist Seminary in 1987.  Florence preceded him in death in 1989 and “Doc” went home to be with the Lord on September 30, 1996.  Associate and friend, George Dollar wrote of him, he was an “able preacher; Baptist Fundamentalist and knowledgeable pastor.”10

W.B. Riley, in a personal note to Dr. Clearwaters in 1947, wrote, “This can be nothing but the last days.  Your ministry will suffer more severe tests than mine has ever known.  I know that you will be found faithful.  I have never seen you waver.”11 May the Lord continue to give us such unwavering giants for the days still ahead.

1 Richard V. Clearwaters, On the Upward Road:  An Autobiography (Minneapolis: Central Baptist Seminary, nd) xi.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, 7.
4 Ibid, 16.
5 Ibid, 18.
6 Ibid, 24.
7 Ibid, 27.
8 Ibid, 50-52.
9 Ibid, 98.
10 George W. Dollar, A History Of Fundamentalism In America (Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 1973) 312.
11 In “The Warrior”, Fourth Baptist Christian School paper, October 25, 1996.

 

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A. T. Robertson

Written by Rick Shrader

A. T. Robertson

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the Baptist Bible Tribune, January, 1999

A.T. Robertson was born on November 6, 1863, at Cherbury, the family home near Chatham, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, where he spent the first twelve years of his life. Though spending a few short years in North Carolina, and the rest of his life in Louisville, Kentucky, Robertson never forgot he was a Virginian. From the son of a gentleman farmer to world-renowned scholar and grammarian, this giant among Baptists always retained his humble and warm enthusiasm for the gospel that came to him in his earliest days. Of his own work he wrote, “Perhaps those who pity the grammarian do not know that he finds joy in his task and is sustained by the conviction that his work is necessary.”1

The Ante-bellum Years

“Archie” (as his mother called him) Robertson could trace the Scottish family name (“Son of Robert”) back a thousand years to Robert of Athol. He was born, however, to John and Ella (Martin) Robertson during the turbulent Civil War years in the American South. The Robertsons managed the fifteen hundred acre farm inherited from Thompson Robertson, A.T.’s grandfather. Part of the inheritance had gone to a surviving sister who, as well, married a grandson of Patrick Henry.

A.T. was born the year the slaves were set free and Appomattax was looming on the horizon. The first twelve years of his life saw rising debts, Reconstruction Days and Hard Times. He wrote, “As I came to notice life about me I found myself in a home of beauty and sadness.”2 He would never forget nor forgo, however, the Southernly manners and deportment of his early upbringing.

Salvation and Baptism

The Robertsons moved to the solidly Presbyterian territory of Statesville, North Carolina in 1875 and bought a small farm that had to be cleared and plowed before it could produce a living. At the same time, a Baptist missionary of the Baptist State Mission Board, Rev. J.B. Boone, held services in the Court House once a month. The Robertsons attended the Presbyterian services for three Sundays and the Baptist services on the fourth Sunday. A Baptist church was soon started with the assistance of A.C. Dixon, pastor at Asheville (who later pastored Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in London). In March of 1876 revival meetings were held by Rev. F.M. Jordan and young Archie received Christ as his Savior. Archie, his brother Eugene and his two sisters were all baptized by Rev. Boone as many of Archie’s playmates mocked the strange sight of total immersion. Boone was to become a Paul to the young Timothy, greatly influencing Archie to consider entering training for the ministry. Under Boone’s tutelage, Archie was already learning Latin and Greek grammar. He was licensed to preach at age sixteen in the Southern Baptist Convention.3

The Student Years

Robertson entered the Southern Baptist college of Wake Forest in 1879, a sixteen year old southern boy with a rare but blessed gift of understanding languages. He excelled in the literary societies as well as in debating. As a freshman he was reading the classics in Latin and Greek. Interestingly, Robertson missed winning the coveted Greek Medal by a single vote in his senior year, a crushing disappointment to him at the time. He later wrote, “It was hard for me to be reconciled to the decision. It’s all right now. I do not need the medal. . . . I have never regretted the work I did for the Greek Medal. Without knowing it I was laying the foundation for my future life work.”4

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary had reopened in 1865 at the close of the war and moved to Louisville in 1877. Eight years later A.T. entered the seminary and was immediately noticed by its Greek professor, Dr. John Albert Broadus. Robertson soon became his prized pupil as well as his teaching aide and, and by the time he was twenty five, his fellow professor. Later, Robertson would marry Broadus’ daughter, Ella.

The Teaching Years

In 1888, before Dr. Broadus died (1895), he appointed Robertson assistant professor in Greek and homiletics. One fellow classmate recalls the immediate affect A.T. had on the seminary:

I can never forget the day Dr. Broadus discovered young Robertson. This Wake Forest student showed such a grasp of Greek that the great teacher’s thrill and satisfaction were manifest to all. Thereafter, in questioning the class, he would close the discussion with, ‘and now what does Brother Robertson think about it?’ Really, his discovery of Robertson was like one discovering a diamond mind.5

This illustrious career lasted for 46 years and affected the lives of nearly six thousand students. It was not without its difficulties, however. Due to his meticulous study habits, and nine exhaustive years of study as a college and seminary student, Robertson suffered a nervous breakdown during his first year of teaching. He had to resign the small church which he had been pastoring as a student and which had ordained him. With a summer of rest, Robertson resumed his work in the fall and continued for the rest of his life.

Being a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary also had many benefits, not the least of which was the acquaintance of great preachers of his day. He heard Moody and Torrey from Chicago; Maclaren, G. Campbell Morgan, F.B. Meyer and Spurgeon from across the seas; and would later develop a working relationship with Maclaren and Morgan. When Dr. Broadus died, Robertson wrote his biography, the first in a long list of books which he authored.

The Classroom

Robertson conducted his classroom in an old seminary style, much like our beloved Noel Smith at Baptist Bible College. Gill, throughout his pages gives glimpses of the daily routine:

Students all remember how abruptly he would enter class, comment on the ventilation, castigate janitors in general, pass right on to ‘Let us pray’ . . . . The prayer over, he turned at once to the calling of the roll and to the reading of any excuses that might have been placed on his desk by men who had not prepared their lesson and feared they might be called on. . . . Then calling for books to be closed, he scanned his class roll, while the students waited in suspense to see who the first victim would be. Running his eye down one, two, three pages of his roll book, he at length fixed upon a man who had either not been called on that quarter or had done quite poorly on his recitation.

Having fixed upon his man, he would say with the solemnity of a judge summoning a prisoner to his feet to be sentenced, ‘Mr. Blank, will you recite?’ Brother Blank stood, bracing himself for the worst.

‘Brother Blank, what is the title of the lesson?’

Brother Blank, clearing his throat for time, replies weakly, ‘The lesson is about the healing of the man who was let down through the roof.’

‘Yes, but what is the title of the lesson?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Well, did you ever know? That will do.’

Mr. Blank sits down in mortification and with not a little resentment, as Dr. Bob records a mark against the name of Mr. Blank as all the class can see. There is no question in any one’s mind that it is an F—a failure. . . .

Nothing would arouse his indignation more than for an unprepared student to rise, when called upon to recite, and pretend that he had studied the lesson, probably with the hope that by a lucky guess he might ‘get by’ . . . There were few, if any, cases of a student committing this error twice.6

The Whitsitt Controversy

William Heth Whitsitt (1841-1911) was elected professor of church history at the seminary in 1872. In 1895 he succeeded Broadus as its third president.7 He was a product of the seminary and also had studied abroad in Germany. The “Whitsitt Controversy” arose in 1886 when Whitsitt published an article in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia affirming that the Baptists as a denomination had emerged from English Separatism in the early 1600s. At this time, many Southern Baptists were divided between this view and that of J.R. Graves who, in an effort to refute a growing Campbell movement, espoused a view that Baptists found their origin in an unbroken succession of churches back to the apostles. The controversy was such that Whitsitt was forced to resign as president of the seminary in 1899.

Robertson took a leading role in defending Whitsitt, along with other young professors such as John R. Sampey.8 Robertson wrote an article in the Western Recorder of Louisville, KY as well as in the Courier-Journal of the same city. This article was widely distributed throughout the South and aligned Robertson, as well as the seminary, with the Whitsitt view. Though Whitsitt had to resign, neither the faculty nor the seminary were obliged to change their view and the Louisville school became one of the major opponents of Landmarkism in the Convention.

The Speaker

Throughout his illustrious teaching career, A.T. Robertson never lost his love of evangelism. Though hindered by a speech impediment from birth,9 he was a commanding speaker who was constantly in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. On one occasion he served as a counselor in a revival meeting held by D.L. Moody. In 1905 Robertson helped organize the Baptist World Alliance, a Bible conference that “would pass no legislation, [but] would allow opportunity for Baptists to grow in fellowship and learn much from each other.”10 The first meeting was held in Philadelphia with such noteable speakers as Alexander Maclaren, J.H. Shakespeare, F.B. Meyer and John Clifford.

Robertson’s part in the Baptist World Alliance made him a sought-after speaker, not unnoticed by Mr. W.R. Moody, director of the Northfield Conferences. From that time on Robertson became a regular speaker at the conferences which were also graced by such eminent speakers as D.L. Moody, G. Campbell Morgan, J. Stuart Holden and R.A. Torrey.

The Author

In addition to his regular classroom schedule and his growing popularity as a speaker, Robertson found time to author forty-five books, almost all in the field of New Testament Greek. In addition, he wrote numerous articles for publications such as Hastings Dictionaries and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Perhaps the most used books are his Word Pictures in the New Testament and Harmony of the Gospels.

His magnum opus and his major life’s work, however, is his Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, commonly called his “Big Grammar.” When Robertson was twenty-five, John Broadus had proposed that they revise Winer, a standard grammar that, by then, lacked the more recent comparative philology for which Robertson was becoming widely known. Due to Broadus’ failing health, the project became Robertson’s to which he gave himself for the next twenty-six years. The work was finally published in 1914, followed by four editions in the next nine years. The first editions contained 1360 pages which were expanded in later editions to 1500. Dr. James H. Moulton of Cambridge called the Big Grammar “The final on the New Testament.”11

The Last Day of Class

On Monday, September 24, 1934, A.T. Robertson met with his Greek class in the morning and expounded on the hapax legomena of “daily bread” in Matthew 6:11. Uncharacteristically, he dismissed the class early that day to go home and lie down. That afternoon he went home to be with the Lord. George Truett is quoted as saying that if he had a billion dollars he would gladly exchange it for Dr. Robertson’s knowledge of New Testament Greek.12 As much as any man in recent history, A.T. Robertson blessed students, readers and the world with richer knowledge of the New Testament and its language.

Footnotes:
1. A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), x.
2. Everett Gill, A.T. Robertson: A Biography (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1943), 6.
3. J.D. Douglas, Gen. Ed. Twentieth Century Dictionary of Christian Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 323.
4. Gill, 49.
5. Gill, 62.
6. Gill, 109, 118, 134.
7. H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987) 446.
8. Gill, 85.
9. Bill J. Leonard, Ed., Dictionary of Baptists in America (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1994) 238.
10. McBeth, 523.
11. Gill, 176.
12. Gill, 176.

 

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Merging into the New Century

Written by Rick Shrader

Merging into the New Century

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the Baptist Bible Tribune, January, 1996.

We are ready to pay our last nickel of time to the twentieth century. If the first ninety-five years are indicative of the last five, we had better fasten our seatbelts and prepare for warp drive. Learning to navigate the “information super highway” is not unlike the experience of merging onto I-70 for the first time as a sixteen-year-old student driver. I didn’t know if I would like it but I had no choice. Years later, and a thousand miles from the hills of southern Ohio, I’m thankful for the speed and ease of I-70. But to tell you the truth, I would rather be putting along old Oxford-Milford road on a lazy autumn afternoon with no particular place to go!

The difference between I-70 and the information super highway didn’t begin in this century. It began on May 24, 1844 with an inventor named Samuel Morse who never drove a car nor heard of a computer. With one small impulse through a metal wire, Morse removed space as a barrier to the exchange of information. Immediately, neither the horse nor train (and therefore neither the clock) were necessary to get information from one location to another. The very next day, over the same Washington-to-Baltimore line Morse had constructed, the Baltimore Patriot sent a news story from Congress to its readers on the Oregon issue. The information age had begun! Today we have over 11,520 newspapers in the U.S.; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets; over 500 million radios and 100 million computers. Instantly, we can see and hear anything that happens anywhere in the world.

The Christian, perched on the on-ramp to the twenty-first century, is faced with a real dilemma: it’s called change. He will have to accelerate from the avenue speed to the Interstate speed. It’s a dilemma because he knows that most people on this new highway are determined to go as fast as possible, ignoring all restraints until they crash and become a faceless casualty on the side of the road. He also knows that an immutable God has made a world which both changes and remains the same. He agrees with C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape who writes to his nephew Wormwood to explain about God’s wish for man, “He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.”

A new year has begun which contains new challenges, hopes and fears but it is not really new, it has happened before thousands of times. Springtime will bring new flowers and grass and sap in the trees but it is not new; it is as old as Eden. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “God had infinite time to give us; but how did He give it? In one immense tract of a lazy millennium? No, He cut it up into a neat succession of new mornings, and, with each, therefore, a new idea, new inventions, and new applications.” It is that “rhythm” of change and permanence that brings quality to life. Hunger is a good and enjoyable experience but it is meant to be taken in cycles. To stop eating or to never stop eating takes away from the intended pleasure and creates an abnormality.

It will be our temptation (since we are children of our age) to desire change for change’s sake more than to desire the things that never change. To our generation the perfectly good word “permanent” has become “stagnant.” Early in this century G. K. Chesterton wrote, “It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony.” Sunrises and sunsets are monotonous because they happen every day and yet because they are each different they create true abundance in life. It is the child full of vitality for life who says, when bounced on daddy’s knee, “Do it again, daddy!” At the close of each day or the end of every season, at the climax of each worship service, we should say as well, “Do it again, Heavenly Father.”

The Christian legacy in this world is the balance between change and permanency. The Christian hates suicide but loves martyrdom because he understands the difference between the two. He is the keenest visionary, understanding the signs of the time, and yet is a lover of tradition in order to give past generations a voice in his affairs (what Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead”). He understands that God, who is the “same yesterday, today and forever” has also said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man.” The cycles of God’s creation are always the same as before but always different, in perfect harmony with His character. In this way God shows the world “His eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse.” The Christian has accepted the permanent attributes of God as well as His changing stewardships and has made both a part of his life.

With this balance of things old and things new, believers can present their Savior to a generation who are stuck in either forward or reverse and never able to fully see God’s purpose in life. The Christian who hides in the past and wishes tomorrow would never come as well as the Christian who worships the future and ignores what happened yesterday have both left the front lines of Christian warfare. We are called to confront the emptiness of our time, not desert and run away nor surrender to the other side.

So let’s pull on out onto this new highway, look ahead, find our open space and get up to speed. But let’s not forget to look in both mirrors as we pull out. A good glance back as well as forward will get us an “A” in the class. And when we’ve roared down the highway for a while and covered more ground than any generation of drivers before us, let’s pull off and take the side road a ways so we don’t miss the flowers that are blooming again or this evening’s sunset.

Rick Shrader

Note:  The author regrets that the footnote references were lost due to the article being originally written on an older PC system.

 

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From What Should We Separate?

Written by Rick Shrader

From What Should We Separate?

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in The Baptist Preacher, Mar/Apr, 1997.

My Missouri grandmother used to say, “There’s not a pot so crooked but what there’s a lid to fit it.”  She had a way of making all things find their proper place.  The wisest man who ever lived warned, “A false balance is not good” (Proverbs 20:23).  In a day of degenerating values and confused standards, it is becoming increasingly difficult to fit the right pot with the right lid.   What is important to one will not be important to another.  What one cannot do another may.

A.W. Tozer wrote, “For the church, wherever she appears in human society, the constantly recurring question must be: What shall we unite with and from what shall we separate? The question of coexistence does not enter here, but the question of union and fellowship does.  The wheat grows in the same field with the tares, but shall the two cross-pollinate?  The sheep graze near the goats, but shall they seek to interbreed?  The unjust and the just enjoy the same rain and sunshine, but shall they forget their deep moral differences and intermarry?”1 This article is a step toward answering Tozer’s question.

Unity, liberty and charity

An appropriate quotation often used today is, “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things charity.”  Although we can use it as we see fit, the quote seems to have originated with Richard Baxter in the seventeenth century and was originally written, “In necessary things, unity; in disputed things [some have ‘doubtful’] things, liberty; in all things, charity.”2

Richard Baxter was an English Nonconformist who urged moderation among those who would leave the Church of England.  Eventually, however, he himself could not remain in the Church because of the Uniformity Act of 1662.  He refused a bishopric offered to him by Charles II and was later imprisoned by James II.3 Baxter wanted religious liberty for those who disputed the church’s dogmas but did not find it in his lifetime.  His appeal to liberty for “disputed things” fell on deaf ears in the Church of England.

What things are essential:  Early voices

Baxter’s word “disputed” and today’s word “nonessentials” may or may not carry the same connotations.  The word “nonessential,” however, has a religious history older than Baxter.  It goes back a hundred years in the Reformation era to a dispute called the “adiaphora.”4 This word literally means “things indifferent” or “nonessential.”  In 1548, two years after Luther’s death, Charles V attempted to unite Catholic and Protestant Germany with a law called the Augsburg Interim.   Due to its failure to please Protestants, a compromise measure was reached in Leipzig the same year by consulting Melanchthon, who was the Reformation leader at the time.

Melanchthon agreed that many differences in doctrine were adiaphora or nonessential and need not be disputed by the Lutheran churches.  Among these were confirmation, veneration of saints, the Latin mass, Corpus Christi Day, extreme unction.   He also “adopted a modified and vague doctrine of justification by faith.”5 Conservative Lutherans, who more closely followed Luther, could not abide by what Melanchthon deemed adiaphora.  Their spokesman, Matthias Flacius, opposed him, “objecting to his compromising with the Catholic Church on nonessentials.”6 It is “widely conceded that Flacius saved the Reformation.”7 It was not until 1580 and the Book of Concord, that the Lutheran faith was again a clear voice of the gospel.

Believer’s baptism an essential

I don’t know if Baxter had the adiaphorists in mind when, a hundred years after, he pleaded for the unity of the Church of England.  Both he and Melanchthon failed in unifying divergent churches by appealing to so-called nonessentials.   They both failed to realize there are just some things that cannot be relegated to the status of nonessential.  Flacius could see that even the great Melanchthon could not.  J. Gresham Machen, who, early in this century, sacrificed his position in the Presbyterian Church, USA, over what the Church considered nonessential, wrote, “Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith.”8

Interestingly, during Melanchthon’s time in Germany, each state could choose to be Catholic or Lutheran.  Toleration was given to Catholics in Lutheran states and Lutherans in Catholic states.  But as Jacobs says, “Calvinism and Anabaptism were excluded from toleration.”9 The great Anabaptist, Balthasar Hubmaier, had earlier debated Zwingli over infant baptism.   Zwingli argued that though the New Testament doesn’t mention infant baptism, neither does it forbid it.  Therefore, he claimed, it is a nonessential and can be allowed.10 Of course, the candidate and the mode of baptism were essential to Baptist belief.  And even though Zwingli argued for infant baptism on its nonessential basis, it was essential enough for him to drown dissenters to keep them from disrupting the state church.

Baptism battles still being waged

In the 1963 Fundamental Baptist Congress of North America held at the Temple Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan, Baptists from various fundamental groups showed historic unity against regarding infant baptism as a nonessential.  Noel Smith, preaching on the separation of church and state said, “This is why Baptists were persecuted, imprisoned, and murdered for so many centuries.  Their believer’s baptism was decisive blow against the church state.”11 In the same congress, Richard Clearwaters spoke of the Reformers, “All of these in turn became persecutors themselves! These Reformers, after so heroically freeing their churches from the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, fastened a State Church upon their churches because they all refused to cut the cord of infant baptism.”12

There is effort being made today to again bring Catholics and non-Catholics together in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document urged by Charles Colson and Richard Neuhaus.  The issue is whether coming to Christ by “faith alone” is essential to becoming a believer.  In the shadow of this last year, Promise Keepers celebrated communion with both Evangelicals and Catholics in the Clergy Conference held in the Georgia Dome.13 Though the objections are increasingly fewer, many Baptists (this author included) think the meaning of the Lord’s Table must not be relegated to a nonessential for the sake of ecumenicity.

Local churches determine essentials, nonessentials

I said in the beginning that I thought Baxter’s quotation, even the way it is used today with the words “essential” and “nonessential,” is appropriate.  Somewhere Christians do give and take on things regarding their faith.   It figures that if there are things that are essential, there must also be things that are nonessential.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t strive to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, but that we live in a broken world, and we are not going to be able to change everything.  This is true within the individual, between husband and wife, among local church members and in larger Christian efforts.

The Articles of Faith of my church are designed to be both broad enough to include many Baptist families who differ on some things, and yet narrow enough to say something definite and to distinguish us from other kinds of churches.  Still, what is essential to the operation of a particular local church may not be to the cooperation of many local churches.  To Baptists, independence is the key that allows each church to decide when the nonessential has crossed over the line into essential.

In the last issue of The Baptist Preacher, a message by Art Wilson from 1960 was reprinted concerning a difficulty among the churches of the Baptist Bible Fellowship that year.  In resolving the problem, Wilson wrote that they “were all prayerfully concerned, that in this dreadful hour of world history we would not come up with something which would, upon presentation here, divide our forces, split our larger interests and defeat the very cause for which we believe God raised up the Fellowship.”14 That did not mean that the details of everyone’s doctrine were not important.  But it did mean that Baptist churches of like faith and practice could count smaller differences as nonessential to fellowship and cooperation.

An example from Baptist history

In his History of the Baptists, Thomas Armitage spends considerable space describing the ribald Munster Movement of the sixteenth century, a parallel to real Anabaptists of the time.  Munsterite congregations practiced such things as polygamy, public flagellations and followed a pagan practice (Armitage lists Catholic and Protestant practitioners also) of baptizing converts completely undressed.15

This practice of indecency was confronted by the true Baptists of the day who said the Munsterites had gone beyond the line of nonessentials in fellowship.   Baptists were accused of enough things in that day without adding nakedness to the list.  Baptists since then have striven to distance themselves from the fanatics at Munster.  Armitage then adds a description of what Baptists did to combat this error.   “In Augsburg, in three gardens attached to houses there used to assemble more than eleven hundred men and women, rich, mediocre and poor, all of whom were rebaptized.   The women, when they were rebaptized, put on trousers.  In the houses where a baptistry was these trousers were always kept.”16 The reader may draw his or her own conclusions.

A New Testament example

The Corinthian church could not make the proper distinctions between things essential and nonessential.  They had taken Paul’s teaching on liberty and turned it into license.  “All things are lawful,” they would say, and Paul answered, “But all things are not expedient” and “I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor 6:12).  It was true, that “Meats were for the belly, and the belly for meats” (vs 13).  Eating various kinds of meat was nonessential.  But the Corinthians went further and equated the use of the body for fornication with the use of the body for meat.  “No!”, Paul said, God will destroy the belly and meat because they are nonessential, but He will raise up the body in resurrection because it is essential.

Interestingly, Lenski (a Lutheran) says, “In this instance, the principle that ‘all things are allowed’ cannot be applied.  God himself regulates the sex relation.  He limits it to two distinct spheres, the one that is stamped with His approval, the other with His severe disapproval; both are thus entirely removed from the territory of the adiaphora.”17 The Corinthians had the same problem when they had smugly accepted the man practicing fornication (chapter 5) as if they were being loving and generous.  They could not see the essentials involved.  Then in the second letter, Paul had to teach them to forgive and accept the same man once he truly repented (2 Corinthians 2).

The power of wisdom

We all have a tendency, like the Corinthians or Melanchthon, to relegate essentails to nonessentials with a slogan.  We say, “Oh, that’s just being legalistic and judgmental.”  We also have the ability to turn myths into essentials, much like Zwingli’s infant baptism.  Or we imitate the Munsterites by combining an essential like immersion with something nonbiblical and then call that historic Baptist doctrine.  A.W. Tozer wisely wrote, “Power lies in the union of things similar and the division of things dissimilar.”18 May the Lord help us to know the difference in our generation.

Notes:
1. A.W. Tozer, The Best Of Tozer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978) 72.
2. Frank S. Mead, 12,000 Religious Quotations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989) 43.
3. Mayo Hazeltine, Ed., Orations From Homer To McKinley, Vol 4 (New York: Collier, 1902) 1548.
4. History and definition of the adiaphora can be found in Bible dictionaries as well as church history books.  Eerdman’s Handbook of Christianity has a helpful article on p. 374.
5. A. Renwick, Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978) 24.
6. “Flacius Illyricus, Matthias,” Columbia Encyclopedia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964) 725.
7. A. Renwick, Ibid.
8. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity And Liberalsim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977) 51.
9. Charles Jacobs, The Story Of The Church (Philadelphia:  Muhlenberg Press, 1947) 231.
10. Thomas Armitage, The History Of The Baptists, Vol. 1 (Watertown: Maranatha Press, 1976) 197.
11. Noel Smith, “The Separation of Church and State,” The Biblical Faith of Baptists (Detroit:   Fundamental Baptist Congress, 1963) 197.
12. Richard Clearwaters, “The Heritage of Baptists,” The Biblical Faith of Baptists, 215.
13. See an excellent article by Dr. Myron Houghton in the January 1997 issue of the Faith Pulpit (Faith Baptist Theological Seminary, Ankeny, IA) entitled “Promise Keepers: A Fundamental Evaluation.”
14. Art Wilson, “The Decision To Remain A Fellowship,” The Baptist Preacher, Vol 6, No.1, p. 11.
15. Armitage, 378.
16. Ibid, 389.
17. R.C.H. Lenski, First Corinthians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1963) 259.
18. Tozer, 73.

 

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A Response from No-Man’s Land

Written by Rick Shrader

A Response from No-Man’s Land

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the September/October 2001 issue (Vol. 10, No. 5) of The Baptist Preacher.  The original article is found in the September 2001 issue (Vol. 8 No. 9) of Aletheia under the title “Is There An Alternative Point Of View?  (To The Traditional vs Progressive Debate)”.

An ancient saint once said, “It is equally wrong and stupid to censure what is commendable, and to commend what is censurable.”1 G.K. Chesterton once argued against a false premise by stating, “It was not two ways of finding the same truth; it was an untruthful way of pretending that there are two truths.”2 That is what I often think after hearing or reading comparisons of today’s ministry philosophies.

Should we be traditional or progressive in our ministry?  Are these two ways of approaching “how we do church” mutually exclusive, two sides of the same coin, or are they even choices at all when trying to be biblical in church ministry?  I think we have become, like the world around us, champions of the definition!  That is, we spend more time arguing to make the definitions of those buzz words fit what we already do, than evaluating our ministry in light of Scripture and changing to fit it.

None of us wants to be seen as anti-traditional because we realize we have an historical faith that is filled with traditional teaching.  Yet none of us wants to be seen as non-progressive because that would mean we are not visionary and up-to-date with today’s culture.  So it seems that good people from both points of view go out of their way to convince us that they are really both.

On the one hand

To be “traditional” ought to mean that we realize the value of our history, a history that is rooted in the historical person and work of Christ.  Christians are still doing what Christians have always been doing:  praying constantly, studying an old book, singing scriptural songs, witnessing of the resurrection of Christ.  It has not historically included unswerving loyalty to one Bible translation, nor only one expression of modesty as opposed to others just as modest. Those things are more ritual than traditional and, as James Draper wrote, “There is nothing wrong with ritual as long as we understand that ritual is like a telescope—not something to look at, but something to look through.”3

Regardless of its difficulties, I am more inclined to be called a traditionalist today than a “progressive.”  It seems to me that those who have misused the definition of “traditional,” have done so out of a positive desire to honor Christ and a willingness to be identified, not with the world but with Him.  I can live with that and argue with these fellow believers about definitions.

On the other hand

To be “progressive” ought to mean that we see clearly where a lost culture is going and we take the steps outlined in Scripture to speak to it regardless of the consequences.  That would be truly progressive in the biblical sense.  Though I believe most progressives truly love souls and desire to see them saved, many, I am afraid, simply do what the Apostle John warns us about apostates:  They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world hears them. (1 Jn 4:5).  To do such a thing is to love the world and its praises more than the praise of God.  Much of today’s “progressiveness” becomes simply worldliness.  It is not, like its “traditional” counterpart, willing to be despised by the world.  In fact, many “progressives” see that as an error to be avoided at all costs even though it is the clear biblical teaching such as when Peter writes, If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you:  on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified (1 Pet 4:14).  Such an approach wins us to the world, but is misguided at winning the world to Christ.

A Dilemma

It is not the purpose of this article to simply criticize the traditional and the progressive approaches, though, as I have stated, I believe they both have their faults.  I do not question the evangelistic sincerity of either.  Nor do I doubt that spokesmen for either approach could produce verses to support their point of view.  I do believe, however that too often we read our perspective into the Bible, seeing wording that supports our preconceived ideas and thus merely confirm what we already think.  We all know this is a fatal flaw of anyone’s Bible study, including, of course, mine.

In my own circle of Christian friends, many of whom are ministers and instructors, I have, for a number of years, been left in “no-man’s-land” when it comes to whole-heartedly supporting either of these two sides.  I have felt that neither is what I read clearly in the Scripture, nor what I see is the need of the lost world.  On numerous occasions I have been unable to say “Shibboleth” (see Judges 12:6) as was requested of me in order to have the blessing of participation in either side.  This was all of God, at least for my account.  It drove me back to the Scripture for my help and my foundation (aren’t you glad I didn’t use the tired misnomer “vision” at that place?).

I think sometimes we have to lose any hope in man’s blessing, which all of us by nature wants, in order to find help solely in God.  It is my own opinion that far too many Christian leaders are desperately desiring far too much approval by their peers.  But the Apostle admonishes,  For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Cor 10:12).

An Alternative

From the Gospels to the book of Acts and the Epistles to the church letters of Revelation, I find an overwhelming call in the Scripture for sacrifice:  sacrifice of our wills, our life’s possessions, things, and even our own life; sacrifice to the point of danger to the body whether by harm or ridicule; sacrifice of the praise of men in this life for the praise of our Savior in the next life.  This is biblical patience.  We are called to give of ourselves in this life; to wait for our rewards; to live an inward life of contentment though the outward man is perishing day by day.

We are living sacrifices, having no ability of our own toward our outcome.  We are stewards of God, entrusted with divine instruction for the household of God.  We are heralds of the gospel, having no right to embellish or bargain with the message from the King.  We are earthen vessels, made to be broken and disposed.  We are priests, offering up spiritual sacrifices to God.  We are sheep and branches and lively stones and a host of other analogies that make us totally dependent on the Lord for any usefulness we may have.

Personally, I have not found this type of thinking in services where participants shout, wave hankies or black Bibles and brag about how tough they are; nor have I found it in services of loud, unsettling music accompanied by casualness, shallowness and bragging about how accepting of everything they are.  Rather, Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:28-29).

A Biblical Model

This “sacrificial” model of New Testament ministry is seen in virtually all Bible writers.  One of my favorite passages is Second Corinthians, especially from chapter 3 to chapter 6.  Paul’s own ministry is put forth as an example against the false apostles who “commend themselves.”  Paul, on the other hand, is always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body (4:10).  He is an “earthen vessel” (4:7); bearing the “light affliction” (4:17) of this life; ready to be “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord” (5:8); an “ambassador for Christ” (5:20) who proclaims a message of reconciliation of the sinner before a holy God.

This ministry must not be “blamed,” Paul says in chapter 6.  Therefore, in order not to “give offense in any thing” and to “approve ourselves as the ministers of God,” we must enter into a three-fold approach to a sacrificial ministry.  I say “three-fold” due to the various cases of the prepositions used in verses 4-10.4

I am proposing that we are sacrificial servants . . .

In Propitiatory Relationships

The believer finds himself in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, etc.  Paul was the example of evangelism that often resulted in antipathy with the world.  I call these “propitiatory” because the sinner is taking out his anger at our Lord through the believers.  Just as sinners crucified Jesus because His perfect life aggravated their sinful soul, so His servants are to speak of Him to sinners and enter into the same persecutions brought on by their guilty consciences.

Is this not the “fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death?”  Yes!  And it is this that brings to our evangelism the “power of His resurrection” (Phil 3:10).  It is when Jesus is lifted up in the way of a cross, that all men are drawn to Him.  The evangelist must be willing to enter this frame of mind if he is to minister.  Suffering for our Lord is primarily to be rejected and resisted, even hurt, by the sinner for Christ’s sake.  Paul knew this fellowship well.  He also knew the power of such preaching.

By Passive Responses

How did our Lord and His Apostles respond in such circumstances?  By pureness, by longsuffering, by kindness, etc.  Peter says of our Lord, Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:  Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judges righteously (1 Pet 2:22-23).  Should those who represent Him respond any differently?

The effectiveness of our witness does not come through human instincts.  We are preservationists by human nature.  We would protect, strike back and defend ourselves when others attack us.  But the true minister does not because his Lord did not.  If the kernel of wheat dies, it will produce more wheat than can be imagined!

As Perceived Realities

How was Paul perceived by those who persecuted him compared to what Paul really was?  As unknown, yet well-known; as dying, and behold we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, etc. Just as sinners perceived Jesus to be different than what He actually was, so His servants are to be perceived differently by the world than what they really are in Christ.

Aren’t people more concerned with how they are perceived by others than with anything?  That is why true evangelism is so difficult.  It truly takes a dying to self, a willingness to be seen in a bad light in order to be effective.  The believer knows, of course, the way God really sees him and is content.

And So . . .

The Corinthians were poor evangelists because their own selfishness restricted the power of their witness (vss 11-13).  They could not bring themselves to such sacrificial action.  They were unequally yoked to the world (vss 14-16) to the point that God Himself could not be as a Father to them (vs 18).

It is spiritual near-sightedness to preserve our image before the world and lose them, rather than concede our image in order to win them.

Notes:
1. Gorgias, “The Encomium on Helen,”  Orations: Homer To Mckinley, Vol I (New York: Collier, 1902) 49.
2. G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Image Books, 1956) 93.
3. James Draper, Jr., Colossians: A Portrait of Christ (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1982) 8.
4. All Greek texts agree in the prepositions used.  The A.V. does the best job of dividing the en into locative and instrumental cases in vss 4-7.  Other versions follow the word for word translation of en being “in” (usually taken as locative) where the A.V. recognizes how en can be instrumental as well.  Lenski says, “This en differs from the en found with the preceding plurals which = ‘in the midst of’ the experience of tribulations, etc.  The present eight en = ‘in connection with’ purity, etc.”

 

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Saving Faith

Written by Rick Shrader

Saving Faith

by Rick Shrader

This article originally appeared in the Sept/Oct 1996 issue of The Baptist Preacher under the title, “Why are there pious pretenders in the pews?”

In exalting faith, we are not immediately putting ourselves in contradiction to modern thought. Indeed faith is being exalted very high today by men of the most modern type. But what kind of faith? There emerges the difference of opinion.

Faith is being exalted so high today that men are being satisfied with any kind of faith, just so it is faith. It makes no difference what is believed, we are told, just so the blessed attitude of faith is there.       (J. Gresham Machen, 1923)1

Almost two years ago I wrote an article entitled “Worshipping Worship.” I thought it was time to write a follow-up on worship, so I pulled my “worship” file and perused the entries of the last two years. It has become a huge file with men of varied stripe offering comment and observation. Fundamentalists and evangelicals especially have been justifiably critical of the irreverence in today’s “worship style.” But I’ve noticed (as have many others) that there is an issue that mirrors worshipping worship, and that is trusting in trust or faith.

The nature of saving faith

An Easter article in our local paper was titled, “Many experience rebirth of faith at Easter time.” It seems a man was returning from his faith in the “material world” to a “sense of freedom and comfort” in his Catholic church. He said, “It’s not a change in belief but a change in the method of adoration.”2 The troubling fact is that such a faith has no object. Faith becomes its own object! It is faith in the ability to have faith which, of course, is not faith but works.

When the ECT (Evangelicals and Catholics Together) document appeared in 1994, the only good news was that the issue of saving faith was pushed to center stage. Sadly, many who call themselves “evangelical” have lost the distinctive of their name by proposing that the “good news” is that salvation is in one’s content of faith rather than in one’s object of faith. But I would also suggest that fundamentalists have often been as guilty in proposing that salvation is in one’s confession of faith. That, as well, is a trust in trust rather than in Christ. It seems to me that both errors can pack the pews with pious pretenders.

The Bible basis of saving faith

The New Testament furnishes us not only with examples of genuine faith, but with examples of unsaving faith. John 2:23-25 shows us a group of people who “believed” in the content of Jesus’ message, but John makes it clear that they were not regenerated (James reminds us that the devils “believe” in this way). Acts 8:13-24 shows us a man, Simon, who “believed” and was baptized but, it turned out, his public confession was not enough to bring him to salvation. On the other hand, Hebrews 4:3 speaks of “We which have believed” and have entered into rest. Alexander Maclaren commented, “He does not mean, ‘we which acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Savior of the world,’ but we who, acknowledging, let our hearts go out to Him in trust, and our wills bow down before Him in obedience and submission.”3

When I say that saving faith is not in the content alone I mean that it takes more than just believing that the facts are true regarding Jesus Christ to get saved. When I say that saving faith is not in the confession alone I mean that it takes more than just mouthing some words about Jesus Christ to get saved. The liturgical churches have often been guilty of the former, and the non-liturgical churches have often been guilty of the latter. One error creates an evangelism where faith, or trust, is in the ability to understand, while the other is in the ability to say so.

The vocabulary of saving faith

One biblical (and historic) way of defining saving faith is by using the three Latin words notitia, assensus and fiducia. The Baptist theologian, Augustus Strong, reminded us of these in his 1907 Systematic Theology.4 Recently, R.C. Sproul has defended saving faith against the ECT agenda by using these words.5 I find the three-fold (four, counting confession) definition in the New Testament.

Notitia means knowledge. One must hear of Jesus Christ before he will ever be saved. Faith cannot come before “hearing” (Rom 10:17). Heb 11:13 describes the saints as “having seen them afar off,” i.e., the promises which told of salvation. Obviously, no one can believe if they do not know that salvation is available.

Assensus means to give assent to something or agree. After one hears the message, he may or may not agree as to its validity. Many have never believed that the gospel story is actually true. Heb 11:13 (in KJV & TR) reads, “and were persuaded.” Rev 1:3 has, “Blessed is he that readeth (notitia) and they that hear (assensus). In 1 Cor 14:25 Paul said that prophecy was better than tongues because then someone can interpret and give the meaning so that a visitor may be “convinced of all” that is said.

Fiducia is trust or what Strong calls the “voluntary element.” Heb 11:13 says that they “embraced” the message of salvation which they had “seen” and were “persuaded of.” J.O. Buswell, in his Systematic Theology, stresses at length what he calls this “cognitive element” of faith.6 This is not just a hearing of the gospel and is more than just admitting that the gospel story is true. It is to realize that Jesus Christ can be your Savior and for you to want that more than anything else. (Note: This is where repentance comes in this progression. Paul, in 1 Cor 14:25, says that at this point the man will “fall down on his face.” The Thessalonians, in 1 Th 1:9, “turned to God from idols.”) Sproul speaks of this moment as a change in “perceived value.”7 Now, for the first time, the sinner sees Christ as something to be desired and to grasp with his whole heart.

The confession of saving faith

The Bible adds one more concept to these three, and that is confession. Hebrews 11:13 says that at this point “they confessed.” Rom 10:10 (a passage that deserves a fresh study) says that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto (‘because of’) salvation.” Obviously there are no magic formulas for saving faith. Confession is just that, a public display of what the heart secretly has believed. If the belief is real, the confession will definitely follow.

True saving faith takes place when a sinner has exercised fiducia. After having learned of Christ and become convinced that His claims are true, he is willing to give up anything and pay any price to have Him. When this kind of faith takes place, confession will not only follow but will be impossible to silence; invitations will not have to rely on trickery; lordship will not be a problem; godly living and separation from the world will come naturally because a selfish nature has been overcome by a new nature in love with Christ.

The outgrowth of saving faith

Why does Peter (2 Peter 1:5-7) tell us to “add to your faith virtue?” Because a person who has true faith wants, first and foremost, to please the One with whom he has fallen in love. This simple obedience is virtue. Why does he then say to add “to virtue knowledge?” Because now this person wants to know what he should do to produce such virtue. And the progression continues through agape love.

If you think I am suggesting that a real problem in Christendom today is not that we are becoming too exclusive of all “faiths,” but rather that we have become too inclusive of any partial expression of faith, you happen to be right. And could this not be a vital reason why we see so many saying they have faith but having no interest in virtue? And because there is no virtue, there is little interest in knowledge?

This unsaving kind of faith is simply trust in trust, a faith in faith, but it does not have Jesus Christ as the lovely object and desire of reception. I don’t know how widely this may be the case in our church, but it must cause us some concern. A.W. Tozer wrote, “To the question ‘what must I do to be saved?’ we must learn the correct answer. To fail here is not to gamble with our souls; it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God. Here we must be right or be finally lost.”8

Notes:
1. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdman’s, 1959) 141.
2. Fort Collins Coloradoan, April 3, 1994.
3. Alexander Maclaren, Exposition of Holy Scripture, Vol. 10 (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1959) 304.
4. Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell, 1907) 836-844.
5. R.C. Sproul, Faith Alone (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995) 75-88.
6. J.O. Buswell, Systematic Theology (A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980) II, 175-186.
7. Sproul, 86.
8. A.W. Tozer, The Best of A.W. Tozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1978) 100.

 

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The Baptist Name

Written by Rick Shrader

The Baptist Name

by Rick Shrader

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This originally appeared in the May/June issue of The Baptist Preacher with the title, “Why we won’t take the name ‘Baptist’ off our church.”

There is no denying we live in a generation that disdains labels. To assert any belief with a personal label is to be intolerant and insensitive to those who disagree. The modernist used to simply disagree and was willing to fight about it. The postmodernist says no one should be so dogmatic to say they are right and others are wrong. This is a change from our forefathers, says Bruce Shelley, “The first, now traditional, form of the Christian community in America emphasized denominations. The term for this new arrangement, denomination, comes from the Latin word nomen, meaning ‘to name.’ A denomination, then, is an association of congregations under a special ‘name’ with similar basic beliefs, similar goals in their mission to America.”1

With that positive and historic attitude toward church names, popular singer Steve Green disagrees. In the song “Let the Walls Come Down,” he sings, “Walls designed by Satan in the twilight of the ages, now stand as great divisions all across the world today; walls not born of governments nor strife amid the nations, but walls within our churches and between denominations; stones of tried tradition carved in fear and laid in pride, become a dismal prison to those withering inside; let the walls come down, let the walls come down.” Though these words are not historically accurate, they have become a convenient theology for many of today’s churches and only add fuel to an unnecessary fire.

Some say that they have been offended by unguarded and even unloving statements from some Baptist brethren. I don’t doubt these offenses nor the fact of these statements. However, I don’t see them changing their family name when someone proves to be a nut in the family tree. And I think the analogy is valid. Others say that the lost are offended by the name Baptist and it becomes a stumblingblock to them. But how far are we willing to follow this acquiescence? We could conceivably end up disallowing all speech except the literal reading of the biblical text. Anything else would be human interpretation and may give offense. Others point out the ignorance of our generation and the problem of laying this baggage on their brittle minds. Yet, that is why the schools have not taught Johnny to read. It would be an unkind difficulty to put upon the first-grader.

I have to agree with Spurgeon when he says, “I am unable to sympathize with a man who says he has no creed, because I believe him to be in the wrong by his own showing. He ought to have a creed. What is equally certain, he has a creed—he must have one, even though he repudiates the notion . . . The objection to a creed is a very pleasant way of concealing objection to discipline, and a desire for latitudinarianism. What is wished for is a Union which will, like Noah’s Ark, afford shelter both for the clean and for the unclean, for creeping things and winged fowls.”2 I am not ridiculing nor belittling my friends who have dropped their denominational name. I have been asked my opinion and I am saying I strongly disagree with them. I think the trade-off will pay very poor dividends.

Without trying to defend Baptist history in this short space nor delineating my agreement with its historic doctrines (doctrine being the first factor listed in Acts 2:42), I wish to give some reasons for retaining the name Baptist, especially in our generation.

1. Denominational names (I mean, of course, the one which describes you) are not divisive but unifying because they are up front and honest.

My grandparent’s generation knew what they believed, were honest enough to put it out front on a sign, thanked the Methodists for being honest enough to do the same and all went about their business as good citizens and neighbors. Don’t we today call that being open and genuine? It was the knowledge and forthrightness of their convictions that brought them together. It is today’s ignorance and lack of conviction that separates Christians. J. Sidlow Baxter wrote, “The fatal blight on modern Protestantism is not its plurality of denominations, and the WCC is wasting our time laboring that dreary blunder.”3

2. The willingness to discard the name Baptist is due more to a loathing of tradition than to a concern for the unchurched.

If this generation really doesn’t know what the name means, then what’s the problem? If they are that ignorant then it doesn’t matter to them what the name is. Evidently, it matters more to someone already there. G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead.4 It is allowing past generations a say in our present decisions. Jaraslov Pelikan of Yale University said, “Traditionalism may be the dead faith of the living, but tradition is the living faith of the dead.”5 Perhaps we have become more attached to the ethics of this generation than any other generation.

3. If these denominational names fade away, others like them will take their place.

We already see this happening with names like “Bible Church,” “Vineyard,” etc. Churches will gravitate to others of like faith and wear their labels. So what’s wrong with keeping the ones we have? Besides, any study of postmodernism will tell us that it was the moderns who discarded old labels, the postmoderns are into restoring. The name-changing fad may already be out of date! One postmodern writes, “The idea that all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate is essential to the pluralistic stance of postmodernism.”6

4. The recognition of our doctrine is still the most important testimony we have.

Our doctrine is our conviction about truth, and a denominational title is still a legitimate identification. We are to “stand fast in sound doctrine.” I know we can have correct doctrine without a label, but why? In 1966, Addison Leitch wrote, “But suppose we accept the ‘freedom from definition’ principle. After all, the important thing is to be a Christian, not a Presbyterian. Very well, a Protestant or a Romanist Christian? Will not the attitude that refuses to draw lines between Presbyterians and Baptists or between Protestants and Romanists eventually blur the distinctions between Christians and Buddhists and Moslems?”7

One Baptist wrote in the early 1800s, “From these remarks it will be perceived that while the subjects and mode of baptism is the external ground of difference between Baptists and others, that difference involves a great principle; and the primary question is not, shall infants be baptized? But, whether God’s Word or tradition shall be our guide.”8 I don’t mind wearing a title that indicates that commitment.

5. I’m more concerned with not saying enough with the name Baptist than fearing I have said too much.

I am constantly looking for ways at our church to inform the visitor of what we believe and how we practice. We used to be able to let new people come right into our membership with little or no orientation. But today people will join with little regard for our belief and practice, and we must be as careful as possible. I am not interested in discarding one more way of getting this accomplished. And, if someone mistakenly thinks that doctrine is stuffy and boring, it is our biblical duty to change that thinking (1 Tim 4:12-16). Chesterton said, “This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”9

C.S. Lewis said of his loyalty to his own church, “I found that it was the only way of flying your flag.”10 I have lowered the flag on the pole enough for this “untoward generation.” It has made me uncomfortable in almost every area of life outside my own home. I have simply drawn the line at the name of my church. They can’t have it too.

In a recent reprint of a Vance Havner article, I read and identified with these words, “The church began to degenerate, as Augustine tells us, when holy days were merged with holidays to please the influx of new pagan members. Today we have moved from the catacombs to the colosseum and revised our standards to suit a generation of pleasure-lovers who do not love God.”11 I think we’ve gone far enough.

Notes:  (This was originally an article without formal notes.  Updated footnotes are coming)
1. Bruce Shelley, The Consumer Church ( ) 59-60.
2. Quoted by John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993) Appendix 1.
3. J. Sidlow Baxter, Rethinking Our Priorities ( ) 29.
4. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1994) 47.
5. Quoted by Bruce Shelley, 72.
6. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity ( ) 48.
7. Quoted by Kenneth Myers in Power Religion, Horton, Michael. Ed. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1992) 49.
8. John Adams, Baptists: Thorough Reformers ( ) 64.
9. G.K. Chesterton, 106.
10. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994) 61.
11. Vance Havner,

 

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Preaching the Word in a Pagan Age

Written by Rick Shrader

Preaching the Word in a Pagan Age

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in The Baptist Preacher, December, 1998.

William Wordsworth once said, “Language is the incarnation of thought,”1 which may tell us either why conversation is so scarce these days, or why it is such light fare. But it was Confucius who said, “When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty.”2 That makes the current state of our language very critical. “Anyone wishing to save humanity today must first of all save the word,”3 Jacques Ellul wrote. As preachers, our interest in language is also utilitarian. It is for preaching the Word; for communicating the truth to our own generation. For us, if truth cannot be communicated in normal, everyday language, or if meaning cannot be given in a straightforward manner, our cause and our effectiveness are greatly damaged.

In communication today, there are many wolves in sheep’s clothing. A postmodern age has brought about an impreciseness in language as well as truth. A devotion to relativism causes us to parse every word for the nuance of meaning we want, and to force truth into any mold that meets our need. In such a time as this, we need to take caution in the manner in which we preach the Word. We must be careful in a number of popular areas.

Polling the crowd for moral authority

Over the last few months Christians in this country have had an uneasy feeling about the way governmental leaders have explained their morals and convictions by popular opinion polls. Because a Christian has a Bible which he believes to be inspired of God and to be an unchanging standard of truth and morality, he recognizes false “truths” which are fabricated by popularity. It is essential to the Christian message that truth be seen as coming from a transcendent God and not something that is created by the majority of people.

Soren Kierkegaard once said, “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”4 If we were told up front that this statement came from Kierkegaard, we would immediately label it as existential and we would, of course, be right. Now consider the following statement, “Our task is to grasp and articulate God’s vision for our future and to facilitate the change necessary to create that future.”5 Though this statement is very close to Kierkegaard’s existential statement, we embrace it because it comes from George Barna and has been proven by polling to be the key to success in ministry. In such ways, what was once considered unworthy of the Christian ministry has become its mantra. And the justification for the change is the power of public opinion. As one observer of modern culture has said, “What is at stake here in the debate over postmodernism’s vocabulary is ultimately our vision of the truth and moral order.”6

Can anyone doubt that we have come to a day when Christian ministries are designed and guided by what the audience wants, and often in direct contradiction to what we otherwise say is right or wrong? I have no bone to pick with Rick Warren’s ministry, but in reading his book I can’t help but notice this very thing. At one point he insists, “Faithfulness is often defined in terms of attendance rather than service.”7 And yet when he is deep into the reasons for his successful ministry he says, “After surveying who we were reaching, we made the strategic decision to stop singing hymns in our seeker services. Within a year of deciding what would be ‘our sound,’ Saddleback exploded with growth.”8 And true to our postmodern way of thinking, the only thing that will be seen as wrong about using this quotation is that I have criticized it!

Years ago, the Englishman, Harry Blamires wrote:

Yet, within the Church as well as outside it, this perverted notion persists. Truth is conceived on a quantitative basis—no doubt under the influence of statistical reasoning and public opinion polls. It is being assumed that the more people there are with different opinions to contribute, the greater ‘truth’ will emerge from the mixing of these opinions in the melting-pot. Truth is regarded as a kind of pudding, or brew, which you concoct from human opinions. But truth is more like a rock than a pudding—a rock which you lay bare by scraping away the soil. And the soil is largely compounded of human prejudice and passion.9

Structuring truth for personal advantage

That brings us to a second area of caution. It has become too easy these days to stretch and reshape history, literature or even the Bible itself into anything we want to say or prove. The culprit in this waning standard of truth is two-fold. First, we are selfish creatures who, since Eve and Cain, have found a way to make God’s Word fit our own wants and desires (insert “vision,” “success,” “growth” etc.). Second, our wants and desires find their fulfillment in the approval of our fellow creatures. The approval of the crowd simply feeds the ego which in turn seeks for more approval. In this way truth is “constructed” by popular opinion. The dangers, however, are these: what is truth today may not be truth tomorrow if the crowd’s desire has changed; morality is replaced by “values” which are seen as belonging only to a specific group; and the most base displays of sinfulness become the norm, according to biblical warning (Rom 1:22-28).

The defenses for this method of structuring philosophy are numerous: none of us can follow the ideal completely and so it is judgmental to hold someone to part of it; the quantity of good accomplished by such structuring far outweighs the lack of quality used in obtaining it; and who, after all, can really be sure of what the Absolute Standard says? Isn’t that all a matter of subjective interpretation anyway?

My concerns in approaching such a topic are these: 1) If repentance is necessary for true salvation, what are we saying about that when we ask the sinner what he would like in order for him to come to God? Though I am not a Calvinist and am not recommending the old Puritan “seeking” period for the sinner, I do believe that a sinner has to completely give up his own desire, pride and self-worth in order to accept God’s help. I fear we have created a way for sinners to have their religious cake and eat it too, by placing their interest first in themselves and secondly in Christianity.

2) I fear that we are adding to the consumer mentality which already has engulfed our culture. Bruce Shelley wrote, “The Christian message and lifestyle, which in an earlier day could be more directly imposed, now must be ‘marketed.’ It must be ‘sold’ to a clientele that is no longer constrained to ‘buy’ . . . . Most churches and parachurch ministries are dominated by the logic of marketing agencies.”10 One of George Barna’s books is actually titled, A Step-By-Step Guide to Church Marketing.

3) We are in danger of quickly taking the direction of our churches out of the hands of our elder saints and placing it squarely on the young. We are committing Rehoboam’s error. In a relativistic age, those who scream the loudest demand and get the most attention. That doesn’t mean it is right. It’s just the way it is.

John Wesley once said, “I love Calvin a little, Luther more; the Moravians, Mr. Law and Mr. Whitfield far more than either . . . But I love truth more than all.”11 Perhaps we should hear Solomon’s words to Rehoboam, “Buy the truth and sell it not” (Prov. 23:23).

Redefining Language for cultural sophistication

The Oxford Dictionary of Current English has this definition: “Sophism: false argument, one intended to deceive. Sophist: captious or clever but fallacious reasoner. Sophistic: related to sophism. Sophisticate: sophisticated person, related to sophism. Sophisticated: worldly-wise, cultured, elegant, highly developed and complex.” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things.”12 But I think that today such sophistry has become “sophistication” and it is the thing our generation covets the most.

We see examples of this on a daily basis. Recently I heard the word “iconographic” (usually used in reference to art) used in reference to words and language that defend morality and truth. The speaker was arguing that words are merely icons (symbols, but not the reality) that have come to mean certain things, depending on how culture has affected them. For example, I may say “adultery is sin” but the word “adultery” is only a symbol that has been crafted (deconstructed) to produce a certain connotation in my mind. It may or may not have anything to do with the actual act. In this way “adultery” is iconographic.

These thinkers would insist that Puritanical Christians of generations past decided to attach a negative meaning to this activity by calling it “adultery.” But today’s liberated thinkers are not bound by such moralizing. Remove the attached label, or icon, redefine the word and all such cultural prohibitions are also removed. In such ways, today’s cultural sophisticates have become verbal iconoclasts. Or, as William Bennett just wrote, “They have persuaded many that the sophisticated thing is to dismiss the scandalous as irrelevant.”13 They are effectively reaching into every area of sacred honor and belief and toppling every word that carries moral meaning.

We children of the sixties laughed when the Beatles sang, “I want to hold your hand” because we knew that Mom and Dad thought that’s all they meant. But now we are reaping what we sowed. We groan to hear the most powerful man in the world, himself a product of the sixties, say that adultery is not adultery. He has traded a sacred trust for a mess of iconograhic porridge and he has “found no place of repentance,” even in tears.

As we continue to move from a print-based society to a visual, image-based society, such pillaging of words will continue. The soil is ripe. Attention spans will continue to drop while the demand for entertainment in media will increase. Personal accountability in society and culture will wane while escape to virtual worlds will broaden beyond belief. Reasoning, based on commonly accepted word meanings in conversation, will grow scarce if not disappear altogether. The dictionary will become obsolete.

Technology, far from deepening our mental and verbal skills, has destroyed and replaced them with easier alternatives. Neil Postman wrote, “To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling.”14

Changing the message for a pagan audience

A specific irritant in this emerging new age will be the preacher, the heralder of “thus saith the Lord,” one who must insist that a written text carries specific meaning, including the word “sin.” He has no right, being only a messenger of the King’s words, to negotiate with the text. His is only to proclaim it. Of course, it will become difficult enough to relate specific truths from specific words to an illiterate society who has become too technologically sophisticated to listen.

The preacher will become contentious for Jude, the Lord’s brother, said he would have to contend. He will need to define meaning and refuse multiple choice answers to eternal questions. He will judge between truth and error by an unchangeable standard, and thus commit society’s greatest offense—that of judging something to be wrong. He will be busily running behind the iconoclasts and propping the words up again, only to see them fall as soon as he walks away.

Lest we end our thinking here, on what could easily be defeatism, let me suggest the good news with the bad. The bad news is that the western civilization we have known for a few hundred years, a civilization greatly influenced by Christianity and theistic thinking, is being overrun by paganism. This paganism is bringing with it a whole new way of defining and coming to truth—a way that leads unto death!

The good news is rather ironic. If our job as heralders of God’s truth is to put ourselves in a biblical frame of mind with the biblical writers, then our job is much easier now. Our new pagan world is much like their old pagan world. Their world was awash with thinking about gods being known through nature, experience being the basis for truth, the natural world enmeshed with the supernatural world and therefore as changeable as the seasons, and (something we forget) sex being an integral link between physical experience and celestial significance. Even history had no significance to the pagan because meaning could only be secured at the moment. “The supreme norm is always the status quo.”15

There is apparent danger with the good news. We must not become attracted to the pagan world and think like it rather than in a biblical way. We don’t need to poll the crowd to get our message. We don’t need to structure truth for our advantage because our gospel is established truth. Our Savior is a fact of history. Our message is a revealed truth given in propositional form that transcends centuries and cultures. Our message has clear and unmistakable meaning with words that must not be redefined or changed. Our task is the same as those apostles who first delivered the gospel. We are bringing light to darkness and hope to despair. However sophisticated we become, whatever contextualizing we do, we now have the blessed opportunity to preach the “like precious faith” which they preached in the midst of a pagan age like theirs.

Notes:
1. Quoted by A.T. Pierson, Pulpit Legends (Chattanooga: AMG, 1994) xviii.
2. Erik van Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “Liberalism in America,” The Intercollegiate Review—Fall 1997, 44.
3. Quoted by David Wells, No Place For Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 187.
4. Quoted by Ravi Zacharias, Can Man live Without God? (Dallas: Word Pub., 1994) 205.
5. George Barna, The Second Coming Of The Church (Nashville: Word Pub., 1998) 98.
6. Roger Lundin, “The Pragmatics of Postmodernity”, a chapter in Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1995) 34.
7. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995) 104.
8. Ibid., 284.
9. Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1963) 113.
10. Bruce & Marshall Shelley, The Consumer Church (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1992) 20.
11. Quoted by J.S. Baxter, Christian Holiness (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 174.
12. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1994) 5.
13. William J. Bennett, The Death Of Outrage (New York: The Free Press, 1998) 10-11.
14. Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) 54.
15. Wells, 268.

 

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Dancing and the Local Church

Written by Admin

Dancing and the Local Church

by Admin

by Stephen R. Button

This article is reprinted by permission from the October, 2003 issue of The Baptist Bulletin, the official organ of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, published by Regular Baptist Press. For subscription information, visit The Baptist Bulletin web site, or e-mail at bbsubs@garbc.org.

What’s wrong with dancing?  Why not use dancing as a means to bring the unsaved to church?  Can dancing in the local church be used as an opportunity for evangelism?

Today’s local churches risk increased secularization.  What many churches formerly considered inappropriate for Christians they now consider acceptable.  Attempting to attract the unchurched, many churches are adopting programs and activities once considered worldly.  Though promoted for the noble purpose of eventually winning the lost to Christ, these activities must be evaluated.  Are we changing the lost through them, or are the lost changing us?

Some agree that the church can use almost any technique to draw the unsaved into the church to hear the gospel.  This pragmatism extends into a variety of areas that are often directly, or even indirectly, prohibited in Scripture.  Each church must evaluate how or if it should accommodate itself to an ever-changing society.  One increasingly popular accommodation is that of Christian- or church-sponsored dances.

Dancing and the Biblical Record

“What’s wrong with dancing?” some people ask.  “The Bible is full of references to dancing.  After all, David danced before the Lord.  If it were acceptable for David to dance as a part of worship, why can’t Church-age saints dance as a part of our religious activities?”

The Bible does indeed refer to dancing, using at least six core words to define the activity translated “dance.”  These words appear in a variety of settings and describe a variety of activities.  A study of these words will reveal, however, that dancing in the Bible had little similarity to what is commonly known today as dancing.  The lexical meaning, coupled with the context, will give a clear understanding of what “dance” meant to the writers and first readers of the Biblical accounts.

One word translated “dance” is raqad. This word means “to stamp or spring about wildly for joy.”  It involves leaping and skipping.  When Job answered his critics, he may have had in mind the picture of children playing in a field:  “They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance” (Job 21:11).  He also used the word in contrast to the heaviness of heart associated with mourning (Ecclesiastes 3:4).

Another word, machowl, means “to whirl about or to twist in a circular or spiral manner.”  It seems to suggest the circular round dances familiar in ancient cultures, which were usually segregated by gender.  “The dances probably consisted only of circular movements with artless rhythmical steps and lively gesticulations and were accompanied by women beating tambourines (Judges 11:34).”1

This word also describes the movements one might make lying on a bed when in severe pain due to an injury or illness.2 At least three references use machowl to contrast gladness with sorrow (Psalm 30:11; Jeremiah 31:13; Lamentations 5:15).

The word mechowlah is the feminine form of the previous word, which suggests dancing in the company of others.  This is the word used in Exodus 32:19 to describe the activity Moses found the Hebrews doing when he came down from the mountain.  This “mixed” dancing was obviously sensual and forbidden.  Other uses of this word refer to a kind of cheerleading by the village women in response to a victory.  (Judges 11:34; 1 Samuel 18:6).

The word chagag refers to the processional march, moving about in an organized fashion in a circle.  It was used of festive occasions and by implication suggests being giddy or excited (1 Samuel 30:16).

Two words for “dance” are prominent in the New Testament:  orcheomai and choros.

We get our word “orchestra” from the first, orcheomai. This term suggests a uniform, regulated motion caused by “lifting up” the feet, or leaping about.  It is the word John used to describe the performance by Herodias’s daughter as a form of “artistic” dancing.  Scholars generally assume that her dance had sexual overtones (Matthew 14:6).  However, the term is also used in the nonsexual context of children responding to the sound of a flute, perhaps in a funeral procession or in a parade (Matthew 11:17; Luke 7:32).

The second word, choros, from which we get the word “chorus,” suggests a cooperative effort.  Before it became known for the dancing itself or the group of dancers, it primarily denoted an enclosure for dancing (Luke 15:25).3 This dance would resemble today’s folk dancing and would require a homogeneous activity, as in square dancing.

Commentary Regarding the Practice of Dancing in the Bible

It should be apparent from researching Biblical references to dancing that the “dancing” practiced in Biblical times differed from what is commonly considered dancing today.  “While the mode of dancing is not known in detail, it is clear that men and women did not generally dance together, and there is no real evidence that they ever did.  Social amusement was hardly a major purpose of dancing, and the modern method of dancing by couples is unknown.”4 Note these observations:

  • Many Biblical references to dancing indicate a joyous movement of the body in a spontaneous outburst of excitement and enthusiasm. This movement might be compared to the moves of a football player who prances around the end zone and victoriously spikes the football after completing a seventy-yard run.

  • Many Biblical references to dancing relate to a processional to honor and praise those victorious in battle, or to some other festive occasion.  This “dance” might be compared to the choreographed precision of a band or drill team during the halftime of a football game or to the splendor of the Rose Bowl Parade.

  • Most Biblical references to dancing are in the context of some religious observance, both of true worship and of idol worship.  In true worship, the dance celebrated God and expressed adoration of Him.  The focus was not on the dancing partner.5 In the case of idol worship, however, sensuality was paramount.6

  • Dancing in the Bible was performed mostly by women7 (young maidens), with an exception such as David’s dancing before the Lord.  His dancing was clearly an act of worship, and it may well have been the kind of spontaneous outburst as described above.

  • Dancing as recorded in the Bible was always in the open, in fields or pastures, and during the daytime, with the exceptions of Solome’s dance, which was indoors, and the illusion to dancing in the story of the prodigal son.

  • Dancing was seldom performed with a mix of genders, and the sensual, intimate nature of today’s dancing was foreign to the religious-observance dancing of Biblical times.8

  • None of the dancing referred to in the Bible was social in nature,9 but rather had specific significance to the celebration of an event or as an act of worship.  The nature of Salome’s dance was entertainment, and its style was probably similar to that of a modern-day stripper’s, obviously not sanctioned by its placement in the Biblical record.

It would be improper for us to implant the contemporary meanings of “dance” into Biblical references to dancing.  Biblical dancing reflected its culture, not ours.  From the lexical definitions it is obvious that a dance involved rhythmic movement of the body that was usually accompanied by music.  Biblical dancing expressed joy and gladness at times of military victories (1 Samuel 18:6), cultural celebrations (Judges 21:19-23), or religious and national holidays (Psalm 68:25; 150:4).10 Children would imitate adults in their play and “pretend” to dance (Job 21:11; Matthew 11:17).  Never did men and women dance together.11 Even when both danced at a sacred celebration, they danced separately (Psalm 68:25; Jeremiah 31:13).

Social Dancing from Past to Present

Social dancing often provides the opportunity to become physically close to a member of the opposite sex, which, apart from the dance itself, would be totally unacceptable by many people.  In referring to the nature of social dancing, it has been said, “Its chief fascination lies in the relation of the sexes” (Dr. Brand).  “Take sex out of the dance, and it would lose its fascination for most of those now captivated by it” (Dr. Haydn).12 To appreciate the impact of these quotations, we need to note that these statements were made over a hundred years ago and that they related to the kinds of dances that refined society generally found acceptable (e.g., ballroom dancing).

As Christians, we should have a standard of modesty that is tied to Scriptural principles and not the whims of society.

Dancing as It Applies to the Local Church

Since we cannot use any Biblical reference to dance as a defense of social dancing today, because of the obvious differences in the nature and type of dancing then and dancing today, on what basis can we find defense for a participation in, or approval by, a local church?  Perhaps the answers to the following questions will guide in the formulation of a position regarding dancing in the context of the local church.

  1. Who is permitted to participate in social dancing (that is, the intimate touching, holding, and moving to a musical rhythm)?  Should we allow young people access to each other in such a form as to promote intimacy before marriage?  Should we encourage unmarried people of any age to participate in an activity that is, by nature, a form of sexual arousal?

  2. Would we find acceptable the intimate touching, holding, and moving that characterizes such dancing apart form the context of a dance?  Do we want to create an atmosphere in our church activities that encourages intimacy?

  3. Is it necessary for married couples to openly display their affection and intimacy in public view during a dance?

  4. Would those who wish to dance in this manner be able to comfortably do so as a witness for Jesus?  How can a dance of mixed couples testify to the love and salvation of Jesus?  Would it be appropriate to dance in this way to the tunes of “Amazing Grace,” “To God Be the Glory,” “How Great Thou Art,” or other tunes attributing glory to God and recognizing our need of the salvation of God?

  5. Would such dancing indicate a recognition of the need to be separate from the world, to not “Love the world or the things in the world,” or would it confuse those trying to understand their role as Christians in an ungodly world?  Would dancing accomplish the Great Commission, drawing men and women to Christ?  Or would it distract from the love of God required for any believer in God, and would it focus inordinate attention on human affection?
    Would an unsaved person watching a Christian dancing see the Christian as distinct and set apart unto God, and therefore different from him- or herself?  Would the unsaved person’s observations cause him or her to conclude that since there is no difference in the Christian’s behavior and his or her own, there would be no need for the unsaved person to alter his or her beliefs, since Christian beliefs apparently would have no bearing on behavior?

  6. Could dancing by mature Christians give weaker or immature Christians a license to participate in dancing but with less discernment and discretion?
    Could a weaker believer discontinue his or her journey toward spiritual maturity because of the unnecessary diversion and distraction of dancing or of seeing a mature Christian dancing?  Would this weaker believer have a distorted view of Christian values and standards as a result of witnessing or participating in a “Christian dance”?
    How could dancing in a “Christian” environment add to an immature believer’s concept of spirituality or bring an unbeliever to understand that he or she needs the Savior?  Are we free to use any method to further the cause of Christ?  Are there limitations to our “liberties in Christ” for the sake of others and the gospel?

  7. Is dancing so important that it’s worth the risk of tempting the unmarried with the possibility of sin (adultery), openly displaying the intimacy of a married relationship, jeopardizing a testimony for Christ, or leading an immature believer away from spiritual growth?

Since dancing is such a broad subject, questions about it may be answerable in such a way that an individual believer will feel comfortable in some kinds of dancing.  That is between him or her and the Lord.

But when it comes to the matter of the corporate practice of social dancing by a local congregation, the restraints and requirements increase.  It is necessary for a church to hold the highest possible standard to ensure the purity and holiness of its members before God.  The universal church is, after all, the Bride of Christ and is to be blameless at the appearing of her Bridegroom.  The local church must, therefore, guard its members from the influence of the world and provide the guidelines and atmosphere for the greatest possible spiritual growth.

Utilizing a worldly activity (as demonstrated in the comparison of the nature of social dancing today with the dancing of Biblical times) to draw an unsaved person to Christ is unhealthy for the church and is unproductive in spiritual reproduction.  As a pregnant mother is told to abstain from certain foods, beverages, and activities for the health of her child, so those who are expecting to witness effectively must abstain from certain influences and activities for the sake of those for whom they are to have spiritual care.

Concluding Principles

The purpose of this article is not to pontificate regarding an artificial list of do’s and don’ts.  Every believer has the responsibility to evaluate and apply the principles from Scripture as he or she encounters them.  The pastor of a local church, however, is held accountable to Christ for the care and protection of the local church and its testimony.  Therefore, we must step back from single issues to see the overarching principles to apply:

Personal Purity. We are to keep our lives free from contamination by that which is worldly or sinful.  Scripture clearly defines specific sins for which there should be no question–lying, stealing, adultery, and so on.  However, some attitudes, behaviors, and acts may not be classified as sin, but they pose a threat to a believer and may, in fact, provide an occasion for sinning.  Such gray areas need to be addressed by each believer through careful application of Biblical standards, the counsel of other believers, and an alignment with the priorities of godly living.

Public Testimony. We are to present to the world a model of Christlikeness that will demonstrate the value of forsaking sin and accepting the cross of Christ.  Trying to hold to elements of worldliness (possible remnants of our lives before accepting Christ) may only impair our effectiveness as witnesses to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.  Truly “old things have passed away; . . . all things have become new,” but when we cling to our former things, we are suggesting that life in Christ is insufficient to satisfy the desires of the heart.  Nothing this world has to offer is worth retaining at the cost of losing our testimony before a dying world.

Protection of the Weak. Our example always influences someone.  Scripture teaches us to “abstain from every form of evil” because people make judgments based on what they observe, not on what they know.  For example, a parent may be able to walk close to the edge of a precipice without danger.  His or her child then assumes by observation that there is no danger and, therefore, ventures beyond without fear.

Similarly, our safe participation in a gray area may lead others to accept the gray area as safe, and then they may venture beyond.

Hovering close to the forbidden border may be safe, but it puts one too near danger.  When we are indiscriminately involved in the gray areas, not only may we be in danger of falling, we may be in a position of pushing another over the edge by our laxity.

These principles should be applied to all areas of our lives.  Unfortunately, we tend to accept our “liberty in Christ” as a license to do whatever we want, without reference to how it might affect those around us.  This is selfishness and does not represent the selfless love that Christians are to display.  Jesus could have done whatever He wanted to do, but He was restrained from doing so by His selfless love and commitment to the will of the Father.

Dancing is at best a gray area.  Like other practices, it is not directly forbidden in Scripture.  What references there are to it are couched in a culture that no longer exists and that does not parallel our situation.  That the Bible refers to dancing should not cause us to assume that it gives approval of dancing today.

Since the church must maintain a standard that provides for the spiritual health and security of all believers, young and old, immature and mature, it is inappropriate for us to adopt a policy to allow dancing at church functions or church-sponsored events.  To use dancing as a witnessing tool or drawing unbelievers to church contradicts the basis of the gospel message, which declares a distinction between the things of the Lord and the things of the world.  While privately people such as married couples may be able to dance without jeopardizing that distinction, as a church body it would be virtually impossible.

Notes
1 The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988).
2 R. Laird Harris, ed., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Vol. 1 (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 270.
3 choros – “probably related to chortos (Latin: hortus), chronos, etc., denoting primarily ‘an enclosure for dancing’”: (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, electronic database, Biblesoft, 2000).
4 H.M. Wolf, The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, 1975), 12.
5 “Men and women never danced together.  Even on those occasions where both sexes participated in the sacred professional dances, they always danced separately (Psalm 68:25; Jeremiah 31:13).  Dancing for sensual entertainment was unheard of among the Hebrews” (Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, [Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986]).
6 “The Jewish dance was performed by the sexes separately.  There is no evidence from sacred history that the diversion was promiscuously enjoyed, except perhaps when the deified calf had be erected in imitation of the Egyptian festival of Apis, and all classes of Hebrews intermingled in the frantic revelry.  In the sacred dances, although both sexes seem to have frequently borne a part in the procession or chorus, they remained in distinct and separate companies (Psalm 68:25; Jeremiah 31:13)”  (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary [Chicago: Moody Pres, 1988]).
7 “The performers were usually females, who, in cases of public rejoicing, volunteered their services (Exodus 15:20; 1 Samuel 18:6), and who, in the case of religious observances, composed the regular chorus of the temple (Psalm 149:3; 150:4), although there are not wanting instances of men also joining the dance on these seasons of religious festivity” (McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia, electronic database, Biblesoft, 2000).  See also: “It was usually the part of the women only (Exodus 15:20; Judges 11:34; comp. 5:1).”  (Easton’s Bible Dictionary, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database, Biblesoft, 2003).
8 “Dancing by men and women together was unknown; as indeed the oriental seclusion of women from men would alone have sufficed to make it seem indecorous” (Fausset’s Bible Dictionary, electronic database, Biblesoft, 1998).
9 “Of the social dancing of couple sin the modern fashion there is no trace” (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, electronic database, Biblesoft, 1996).
10 “the dances probably consisted only of circular movements with artless rhythmical steps and lively gesticulations and were accompanied by women beating tambourines” (The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary [Chicago: Moody Press, 1988]).
11 “Dancing by men and women together was unknown; as indeed the oriental seclusion of women from men would alone have sufficed to make it seem indecorous” (Fausset’s Bible Dictionary, electronic database, Biblesoft, 1998).
12 Perry Wayland Sinks, Popular Amusements and the Christian Life (Chicago: The Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1896) 42.

 

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