Skip to main content

Keeping the Baptist Name

Written by Rick Shrader

Keeping the Baptist Name

by Rick Shrader

The practice of removing the name Baptist from Baptist churches has become increasingly popular.  It seems that more and more Baptist churches are opting for displaying a generic name even though they may retain a legal title (as a not-for-profit organization) with the name Baptist in it.  Some Baptist organizations are encouraging this as a way to allow the churches to advertise themselves as a nondescript church without jeopardizing their relationship to the organization or the state.

There are still some negative connotations from Baptist history.  Yet, only a few of the many Baptist groups throughout our history have actually believed, for example, that only churches with the name Baptist are real churches or that only believers in Baptist churches are the bride of Christ (known as “Baptist Briders”).  The insistence on the name Baptist has rather been due to a long and good history of specific Biblical doctrine that categorizes a church as a Baptist church.  The great Southern Baptist Greek scholar of a century ago, A.T. Robertson said, “Give a man an open Bible, an open mind, a conscience in good working order, and he will have a hard time to keep from being a Baptist.”1 Andrew Fuller, associate of William Carey in eighteenth century England wrote, “If the first fruits of our zeal be laid out in making proselytes to that denomination, however right the thing may be in itself, the Lord will frown upon us, and leave us.  But if we be mainly employed in making men Christians, we need not fear but they will be Baptists.”2

So why are many Baptist churches removing the good name from their signs and literature?  I hope to address six areas of concern that I hear or read from our Baptist brethren, and also to add some reasons why I think it is Biblical to retain one’s descriptive name.  I have been as adamant against this new trend as anyone and often feel churches are doing this merely for expediency or even for fear of criticism and I am sure that is true of some.  But I also think there are reasons given for removing the Baptist name that need to be thought through and answered.  One thing upon which I know all Baptists agree is the independency and autonomy of each local church to make their own decisions before God.  With Baptists there are no denominational headquarters that can dictate these things to local churches nor should there be undo peer pressure.  Let every church be persuaded by its own doctrinal convictions and then be true to those convictions outwardly as well as inwardly.

1. “Many people are turned off by the name Baptist.”

This is a reasonable consideration seeing that believers ought to “give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.  Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved” (1 Cor. 10:32-33).  But here Paul is speaking of partaking in questionable practices and of flaunting one’s Christian liberty with little regard for those who are observing.  There is a world of difference between suffering for wrong-doing and suffering for the truth’s sake.  We should avoid every action and situation that offends unnecessarily.  But the cross, explained by our Christian doctrine, will offend and often must offend.  Paul wrote to the Galatians, “And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased” (Gal. 5:11).

There is no real reason for an unbeliever to be offended by the name Baptist except in his own mind.  To acquiesce at this point only removes the opportunity to teach doctrinal truth and answer his own objections to Christianity.  If we retreat from the challenge at this point, when do we stop retreating?  Do we quit singing Christian songs also?  Do we cease to pray when lost people are present?  Do we not give invitations because lost people really don’t like them?  No.  As with one’s own children, the time to begin the education process is immediately, in this case, at the door.

Besides this important teaching tool for unbelievers, we should remember that the local church is first and foremost for the family of God.  The name means important things to knowledgeable Christians.  They deserve a straight-forward statement from a church they are about to visit.

2. The legal name is still retained.

As I noted, many Baptist churches are removing the word Baptist from their advertising but retaining it in their legal documents.  This resembles a stealth tactic which many businesses use that operate with one name but are actually owned by an unknown source.  Cults have typically used stealth tactics to get in the door of unsuspecting people and then later explain who they really are.  The honest citizen would rather know the source up front.  It ought to be true that what we say publicly is what we really are.  If, therefore, a church changes what it says publicly, then let it also change what it is telling the government privately.

Is a name change true to the church charter and constitution?  Would the original signers of these documents think the same way?  Should we be “originalists” with our founding documents or more “fluid” in our interpretation?  I think experience shows that this approach does not foster the original intent of the church but rather weakens it considerably.  I remember an Assembly of God church, in a town where I  pastored, that dropped its denominational name when it relocated. The church grew larger, but in a short year or so you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in the church who knew that it was still (legally) an Assembly of God church much less what Assembly doctrine really was.  Perhaps someone who can’t publicly live with the legal name of the church ought to seek one where he can.

3. Denominational names aren’t in the New Testament anyway.

This argument is not taken lightly by Baptists.  We firmly believe that the Bible is our sole authority for faith and practice.  Many now are thinking that the whole history of denominational names has been a mistake.  We first ought to reflect on our modern way of thinking.  Obviously, hundreds, even thousands, of years of great men and women have not agreed.  Are we really in such a time that we can be much more objective and biblical than they?

I have always objected to those who not only drop the name Baptist but also drop the name Church.  How can one reject a denominational name because they don’t think it is in the New Testament and then also drop the very description that is?  I never liked the word Temple for a church, much less Family Center or Happening!  As a Baptist I have always thought it a great advantage that we have the name of our church used in the New Testament when it describes John “The Baptist.”  It literally means John “The Baptizer” and that is exactly what Baptist churches have always meant by it as well!

The idea of “denomination” only means “the act of denominating” or listing.  What is unbiblical about listing, in any way we can, the beliefs or actions of the church?  Aren’t we to “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 3)?  If our name properly denominates our faith, then we should earnestly contend for it, not carelessly remove it.

4. There are so many kinds of Baptists that the name is meaningless.

With a little reflection it seems that this reason will be discarded.  There are many careless people wearing my family name, but it won’t help clear the name if I abandon it as well.  The best way to clear the name is to use it proudly and properly.  The Baptist name has a rich history of good and proper use.  Of course it has its enemies, but more from a hatred of truth than from a disgust with Baptists in particular.

It is not going to help Christianity in general to lose denominational names.  Past generations were better off when they could kid one another, laugh at one another, go to their own denominational churches, and still be good neighbors.  They were better informed and religiously educated when they had to learn these things.  Denominational names tell you up front what “kind” of Christian church it is, which is honest and forthright.

5. People today don’t know and don’t care about these names.

I have never understood, if this is true, why we would feel the need to change anything.  Some might argue that since the postmodern movement began, people have liked the retention of older and original things.  And for those who don’t care, well, it doesn’t matter anyway.

Again, we are not better off by passing up this opportunity to instruct in a good thing.  Why have we dropped words like “Ebenezer” from our song book?  Are we better off because we have?  No!  We’re not better off but are more ignorant.  We have opted out of our obligation to teach a Biblical word and concept because it was too inconvenient for the adults and parents to insist that the younger generation learn some things they didn’t know.  Churches are often held hostage by their own laziness.  The same thing is happening by finding excuses not to teach our denominational heritage (regardless of one’s denomination!).  It is not that our Baptist name has been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.

6. We are entering a whole new era of “doing church.”

Are we really in such a new age that denominational names no longer function or carry valid meaning?  The answer will always be “yes” from the unbelieving world.  The believing world may answer “yes” but they don’t mean it.  Labels have always been necessary and they will continue to be.  Whether Donatists, Montanists, Anabaptists, or Dissenters, the world has always found a name for religious groups.  God has made the human mind with a need to organize and categorize information.  I remember when “Bible Church” was intended to be a generic name but now it has become its own denomination.  We may call a church “Purpose Driven” or a “Willow Creek” church but we do it for a reason, and that purpose is to denominate what we see with what we know.  At least the older names gave descriptions of doctrine and polity (Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian) whereas today’s names usually are reduced to methodologies (Seeker Sensitive, contemporary).  But they still will serve the purpose of denominating churches into understandable groups.  “Emergent” churches have been the loudest critics of denominational names but they would be nowhere without the denomination “Emergent.”

But is it Biblical?

Surely we would agree that it is not Biblical to take our direction from the world.  We cannot seek the Lord’s will and the world’s blessing at the same time.  This should be a “given” to believers.  It is Biblical to be apologists, always looking for an opportunity to give a reason for what we believe.  It is Biblical to be evangelists, quick to use our resources to preach and to teach in places where the lost do not understand.  It is Biblical to be sound in doctrine, and the denominational names are an open statement about what we believe.  It is Biblical to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, not avoiding ridicule from the world when it comes because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.  It is Biblical to earnestly contend for all of our faith, not merely being content to speak of the common faith.  It is Biblical to let our light shine before men, so that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.

If we are to be relevant, then let us be Biblical!  Let us use every tool we have in our arsenal for proclaiming everything that we believe.  If someone feels there are times and places where speaking less and being less forward has a place, surely it is not in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth!

Notes:
1. Quoted by Everett Gill, A.T. Robertson: A Biography (New York: MacMillan, 1943) 181.  Gill is quoting ATR from his book How To Make Baptists.
2. Michael Haykin, The Armies of the Lamb: The Spirituality of Andrew Fuller (Dundras, Ontario:  Joshua Press, 2001) 194.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Will You Be Saved After the Rapture?

Written by Rick Shrader

Will You Be Saved After the Rapture?

by Rick Shrader

It has often been said that true repentance is seldom late but late repentance is seldom true.  When it comes to repentance during the great tribulation period, this saying seems appropriate.  Though this is a day when prophetic themes are not as prominent as they once were, there still seems to be quite a bit of interest in the question of salvation after the rapture, that is, within the tribulation period.  A Google search with this title confirmed to me not only the interest but the variety of opinion (as well as much confusion) about this question.  The more specific question is, of course, whether or not a person can still be saved in the tribulation if they refuse Christ now and miss the rapture.  That is what I want to address.

A few broad observations need to be settled first.  I do believe in the pretribulational rapture of the entire church of God.  I don’t believe that there will be some believers left who have to earn enough spiritual points to be raptured later.  The church will be complete when she is raptured and her number settled.  But it is also surely true that there will be people saved on earth during the tribulation.  We know there will be two witnesses who begin to prophesy evidently during the first half of the tribulation (Rev. 11:3-11).  These are instrumental in converting 144,000 Jews, twelve thousand from each tribe by the middle of the tribulation week (Rev. 7:1-8).  There is also a multitude of Gentiles converted by this same time (Rev. 7:9-10) probably by the 144,000 who become evangelists and preach throughout the world.  These believers and unbelievers during the tribulation become the subjects of the parables of the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:18-30), the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46), and of the one taken while others are left (Matt. 24:36-41).  The saved out of the tribulation period (wheat, sheep, ones left) remain on the earth and go into the millennial kingdom alive and in physical bodies but the lost (tares, goats, ones taken) will be cast into torment.

It should also be stated that salvation, even within the great tribulation period, will be by grace through faith in the blood of Christ brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  It will not be the Old Testament  time because that has been finished, but it will not be the age of grace (church age) either because the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church will also be finished.  But since salvation has always been by God’s grace through the faith of the believer based on the blood sacrifice of Christ and accomplished by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, salvation in the tribulation period will be accomplished the same way.  The circumstances for these things to be brought about, however, will be unlike any mankind has yet known.

Therefore, I did not title this article “Can You Be Saved After The Rapture?” but “Will You Be Saved?”  And I am addressing particularly those who have knowledge of these things now and are making a conscious choice to delay faith until after the rapture.  Perhaps some are even waiting to see if these things will really happen and then, if they are in fact true, they will quickly ask Jesus to save them.  If you are thinking like that, I would encourage you not to be so bold in your rejection of Christ and the precious drawing of God’s Spirit, nor to place your eternal destiny on a wager that a later chance will be given you.  The Bible strongly indicates that salvation for you will be extremely difficult and that you will most likely be under a strong delusion allowed by God and fostered by Satan and his antichrist.  Ten reasons may be given for this point of view.

The first three reasons why you probably will not be saved if you wait until after the rapture involve the most direct statements written by the apostle Paul to the Thessalonians.

 

1. You have not had sufficient love of the truth to be saved now.

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved (2 Thes. 2:10 ).  Here Paul says that unrighteousness will be so deceiving precisely because this person had not (previously-past tense) loved the truth enough to be saved.  These kinds of people easily become hardened in their heart.  This would surely be true of a person who purposely refused the gospel prior to the rapture.

2. You will be under strong Satanic delusion allowed by God.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie (2 Thes. 2:11).    “A lie” is actually “the lie” perhaps referring to the antichrist pretending to be the real Christ.  One who has refused the real Christ now will be a prime candidate for His imitator.  Most striking, however, is the indication that God Himself is pleased to be the active agent in allowing this strong delusion to come specifically upon those who previously refused His gracious offer.  Will a person be saved if God is no longer drawing him?  If you have had your opportunity in the age of grace, you will be under strong delusion about Christ in the tribulation.

3. You will have more pleasure in sinful activity than interest in being saved.

That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thes. 2:12).  John recorded in Revelation that although many will experience severe judgment from God, they will not repent of the works of their hands . . . Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts (Rev. 9:20-21).  Paul wrote that the perilous times of the last days would be characterized by people being lovers of all kinds of pleasures more than lovers for God (2 Tim. 3:1-5).    It will therefore be a righteous thing for God to display His displeasure by confirming such rebellious ones in condemnation who had refused (past tense) the truth.  To purposely reject such truth now, places you in severe danger for the future.

The last seven reasons are further facts that have direct bearing on the condition of salvation in the tribulation.

4. The Holy Spirit will be removed.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way (2 Thes. 2:7).  The Holy Spirit is the Restrainer of sin in the age of grace.  He dwells within the believers and will leave when they leave (or, conversely, they will leave when He leaves).  As noted previously, He will still convict and draw individuals during the tribulation, but not in the same manner which He does now.  Sin will certainly abound more because He is gone; delusion from God will increase; idolatry will reach its zenith.  It seems also that unbelief will reach unparalleled levels.  The writer of Hebrews says that after one has tasted of the Heavenly Gift and refused Him, it is impossible to renew him again unto salvation (Heb. 6:4-6).

5. The Church will be removed.

In the age of grace, it has been the church’s unique responsibility to evangelize the world.  By it the gospel has been preached around the world in almost every language, tribe, and culture.  We can’t imagine what effect the removal of all believers will have on the gospel.  The Jewish evangelists of that day will be at a huge disadvantage compared to the universal scope of the gospel by the church today.  If you are not convinced of your need of salvation now by the preaching and testimony of the church, neither will you be then.

6. The world will be in great apostasy.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition (2 Thes. 2:3).  Although this “falling away” may actually refer to the rapture, it is abundantly clear that the tribulation sends the world into great apostasy.  Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils (1 Tim. 4:1).   The reason you will not believe now is because the apostasy of Satan, has already blinded your mind (2 Thes. 4:4). It will be much worse in those days.

7. There will be great pressure to receive the mark of the beast.

Revelation makes it clear that anyone who does receive the mark of the beast will not be saved (Rev. 14:11; 20:4).  Since the purpose for this mark is to be able to survive religiously and economically during the tribulation period (Rev. 13:17), and since we are already so conditioned to body markings, idol worship, and convenience buying, the reception of the mark will be welcomed by the world as a miracle of technology.  You probably will not even discern the fact that this is also sealing your eternal fate.

8. Peer pressure will be greater then than now.

It is amazing to see that in the coming tribulation period people turn quickly to a herd mentality (Rev. 6:14-17; 9:20-21; 13:8; 16:21).  History has shown that when powerful orators speak to crowds, and masses of people are swaying and screaming together, and shocking action is proposed, the entire crowd will follow obediently.  Even today’s political season illustrates that crowds are more interested in emotional unity than in rational sensibility.  If you are rejecting Christ now it is likely due to fear of what others think of you.  How much greater will the pressure be in that time.

9. The fear of physical persecution will be greater than at any time in history.

The second (red) and fourth (pale) horses of the apocalypse (Rev. 6:3-4; 7-8) bring in death and killing in unparalleled proportions.  The inhumane treatment of the two witnesses as their bodies are left lying in the streets of Jerusalem while all the world cheers shows the savage nature of tribulation people.  The antichrist and false prophet order world-wide executions by beheading for anyone refusing the mark of the beast.  To dissent in any fashion will mean immediate detection and suspicion.  The occasional savagery we observe now by mass killers and murderers will become the norm in that day.  Public executions will be common.  It has never been man’s nature to easily withstand physical threat and eventual torture.  The best of Christians have acquiesced under such terrible circumstances.  The reader ought to consider what it is that keeps you from believing now and then ask why you think believing then will be easier and more within your physical ability to withstand.  For every fear you have now there will be ten-fold more in that day.

10. Sins of presumption are the most serious with God.

Under the law, Moses wrote,
But the soul that doeth ought presumptuously, whether he be born in the land, or a stranger, the same reproacheth the LORD; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.  Because he hath despised the word of the LORD, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him (Num. 15:30-31).  The book of Hebrews gives four extended warning passages to those who would hear the gospel but knowingly refuse it (Heb. 2:1-4; 3:7-11; 5:11-6:6; 10:26-39).  If the Israelites who refused God’s offer perished, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation (2:3)?  For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries (10:26-27).  To presume that you can refuse God’s loving offer of grace, turn your back on His Son’s sacrifice on your behalf, and then be confident that there will be opportunity left for you at a later date, especially in the great tribulation, is to act most presumptuously before God.  I would not, if I were you, take such a chance!

Someday you’ll hear God’s final call to you;

To take His offer of salvation true;

This could be it my friend, if you but knew,

God’s final call, God’s final call.

If you reject God’s final call of grace;

You’ll have no chance your footsteps to retrace;

All hope will then be gone, and doom you’ll face;

O hear His call! O hear His call!

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Our Baptist Missionary Heritage

Written by Rick Shrader

Our Baptist Missionary Heritage

by Rick Shrader

Retracing the steps of our Baptist and Independent forefathers is always an enriching experience.  Whether one learns of those brave souls who endured terrible torture and death, or those who languished in prison, or those who fought theological and apologetic battles for the faith, it is always good to be put in remembrance of our heritage.  Having recently returned from another Baptist History module in England and Scotland, I am again encouraged and enlightened in my own Christian walk.  Sometimes the reality of what others did for Christ long ago does not seem close to home until we put our feet on the same soil or walk through the same streets and buildings or even jail cells.  This is true in Bible lands and also in Christian history lands.

The approximately five hundred years between the Protestant Reformation and today is an amazing part of history for all Christian denominations, but especially those independent Bible believing churches like the Baptists who were truly the “step-children” of the Reformation.

Protestant Struggle

In England in the mid 1500s, Protestants were being put to death by “Bloody” Mary Tudor at Smithfield, the Tower of London, and various other notorious places.  John Rogers, compiler of the Matthew’s Bible, was the first to burn in Mary’s fires.  After being held in Newgate Prison he was led to Smithfield Market for execution (the infamous market where William Wallace was tortured centuries before).  Both prison and market are within sight of his own parish church.  Rogers’ wife and eleven children managed only a few words of encouragement before the man of God was placed in the flames.  Rather than recanting, Rogers washed his hands in the flames, “as if it had been cold water” and lifted his hands toward heaven until death came.  John Bradford, who would soon find the same fate, wrote to Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley who were being held at Oxford until their own executions, and said, “Our dear brother Rogers has broken the ice valiantly.”  So began Mary’s 45-month reign of terror which saw over 300 Protestants burn for refusing her Catholic mass.

Independent Baptist Struggle

A hundred years passes quickly but can turn the world upside down.  By 1660 Cromwell’s Commonwealth had ended, British Monarchy was restored, and the Church of England was again the official state Church.  By 1662 the Act of Conformity was in effect requiring all clergy of any religion to give full consent to everything in the Church of England Prayer Book.  Now the same belief system that was persecuted by the Roman Catholic system was itself persecuting others who would not worship as it demanded.  It was during the latter half of this century that John Bunyan, converted tinker and veteran of Cromwell’s army, began preaching publicly and without the Prayer Book.  In addition to that offense, the recently passed Conventicle Act forbid any attendance at a public religious meeting other than the state church.  Bunyan could abide neither, was arrested, and imprisoned for twelve years.  At the end of that time, when he was eligible for release upon promise not to violate these codes, Bunyan assured his captors that if he were released, he would be preaching again within the day.  He was placed in the river bridge gaol for another three years.  It was during these years that Bunyan left the Christian world the most published book in the world except for the Bible Itself, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Evangelistic Baptist Struggle

We may carry our upside down story a little further.  Fast forward another hundred years and we find evangelical Christianity at peace in England and Scotland with state and dissenting churches free to worship as their consciences dictated.  Baptist churches had flourished as they always have in times of religious tolerance.  Particular Baptists (Calvinistic) as well as General Baptists (less Calvinistic and/or Arminian) had flourished and settled into their patterns of belief and worship.  Among the Particular Baptists, John Gill, pastor of New Park Street in London (later to become Metropolitan Tabernacle), was known for his hyper-Calvinism.  Gill had been born in Kettering in the Midlands.  Many others were ardent proponents of this theology as well, including John Rylands, Sr. of College Lane Baptist Church of Northampton in the Midlands.

The Midlands, as the middle section of England is called, would become the cradle of the most important missionary venture of modern times.  With a certain coldness settling in over the churches, God began building a fire under a group of young independent Baptists, including John Rylands, Jr., son of (also co-pastor with) the influential pastor in Northhampton.  The Baptist churches held monthly associational meetings but seldom was there a challenge for missions.  In 1779, Robert Hall, Sr., pastor at Arnsby preached a sermon to the monthly meeting from Isa. 57:14 on the obligation to world-wide missions.  This stirred four young men who began monthly prayer meetings regarding their obligation to missionary work.  They were John Rylands, Jr., John Sutcliff of Olney, Andrew Fuller of Kettering, and an even younger man from Moulton named William Carey.  They also began reading literature on revival from an American theologian named Jonathan Edwards.

In 1785 young Andrew Fuller, pastor of Gold Street Baptist Church in Kettering, published a tract titled, “The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation” in which he urged that it was the duty of all gospel preachers to give the unconverted an opportunity to be saved.  Meanwhile, in Moulton, William Carey was already drawing a map of the world for his young pupils and was growing burdened for the vast people groups of the world.  In 1791 Carey also published a tract titled, “An Inquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen.”  Carey argued that the Great Commission was not fulfilled by the Apostles and that if we still had the obligation to baptize and teach (which even the most Calvinistic obviously practiced) then we also had the obligation to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

Missionary Baptist Struggle

In the following decade events would transpire more quickly toward the establishment of modern missions.  On April 27, 1791 in the associational meeting at Clipston, Andrew Fuller of Kettering, and John Sutcliff of Olney preached on the necessity of missionary work by the churches.  A similar meeting was held in Northampton where John Rylands, Sr. presided over the session.  Carey rose to ask the association to consider whether the Great Commission to take the gospel into all the world was not obligatory on all ministers in all ages.  It was such a provocative question that the others could hardly believe he would dare to ask it.  Incensed, Rylands, Sr., rose, fixed his eyes on Carey, and said, “Sit down, young man, you are an enthusiast.  When God pleases to convert the heathen, He’ll do it without your help or mine.”

However, the fire was lit and would not be extinguished.  On May 29, 1792 Carey was to preach in Nottingham, at Friar Lane Baptist Chapel.  This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting.  Carey preached from Isa. 54:2-3, “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation.”  From this sermon came his nearly immortal words, “Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.”  But Carey was to be somewhat disappointed.  He had urged his friends the night before, as they talked late into the night at the Angel Inn, to do something of a definite nature about world-wide missions.  But the meeting ended with no action taken.

On October 2, 1792 the pastors’ meeting would be in Kettering at the church of Andrew Fuller.  As was their custom, they met the previous night at an Inn for fellowship.  This time they stayed in the house-turned-Inn of a member of the church, the Widow Wallis.  About a dozen men sat up late into the night while Carey read how the Moravian missionaries had been used of God in great ways.  By the end of the evening a resolution was passed:

Humbly desirous of making an effort for the propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen, according to the recommendations of Carey’s Enquiry, we unanimously resolve to act in Society together for this purpose; and, as in the divided state of Christendom, each denomination, by exerting itself separately, seems likeliest to accomplish the great end, we name this the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathen.”

An offering was taken that night which amounted to a little over thirteen pounds.  Names and amounts were recorded which are still available to the public.  Surprisingly, Carey’s name is not on the list!  He was so poor he could not give but promised rather that, if they would all hold the ropes, he would descend into India to mine for souls!  From that day Carey became the first and life-long missionary and Andrew Fuller the first and life-long secretary.  The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS as it was referred to) became the model for Faith Missions and Carey, the Father of Modern Missions.  Carey went to India and never returned and is buried there still.  Fuller went on to be a great theologian and ambassador for the BMS and for all foreign missions.

Local Baptist Church Struggle

Our story doesn’t end in the Midlands.  Although the BMS strongly influenced churches in London, it also had a providential effect in Scotland.  The Baptist movement there had various beginnings but none more influential than the Haldane brothers, Robert and James.  At a time when most Scottish Independents were overly influenced by Presbyterian principles (non-immersion, elder rule), the Haldanes became convinced of adult baptism and congregational rule.  One of their converts, Christopher Anderson heard Andrew Fuller preach on missions while in Scotland and surrendered to the mission field.  After attending Bible College in Bristol, health issues forbade him to go to the field.  Anderson returned to Edinburgh and began a church in Richmond Court which maintained a strong missionary zeal due to the influence of Fuller and the BMS.  The church collected money for the BMS and itself sent two missionaries to work with Carey in India.  That same church later purchased a building off Charlotte Square which is today still called Charlotte Baptist Chapel.  It has had illustrious pastors such as Graham Scroggie and J. Sidlow Baxter.

A century later, Charles Haddon Spurgeon would call Andrew Fuller the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century.  Spurgeon himself carried on the Baptist conviction of soul-winning and world-wide missions from a Particular Baptist perspective.  Metropolitan Tabernacle still sells Carey’s and Fuller’s books for its congregation and visitors.

And So . . . .

Baptists, mere step-children of Reformers and disconnected entirely from Rome, never persecuted anyone.  They have wrangled among themselves but only pursued others with ideas and truth.  Their faithfulness to evangelism and missions was born out of difficulty and perpetuated by obedience to God’s command.  We are still practicing Faith Missions in our independent churches largely after the model that was born in the Widow Wallis’ house that night in 1792, which, according to those faithful men, was born in the pages of God’s Word.

The twenty-first century must be influenced also by Baptist missionary work.  It must also be grounded in the understanding of the depravity and lostness of the multitudes of the world’s people groups.  It must preach the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone for forgiveness of sin and access to God the Father.  It must baptize those who will believe by faith and establish churches to teach them all things that the Lord Jesus taught us, especially that we too must go into all the world and give men the opportunity to respond to the gospel.  It is not necessarily ours to win the whole world, but it is ours to evangelize the world with the Good News that Jesus saves.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Salvation and Godliness

Written by Rick Shrader

Salvation and Godliness

by Rick Shrader

Some people think they see contradictions in all parts of the Bible.  Recently I attended a debate at a local school where a Christian apologist debated an agnostic over the validity of the resurrection of Christ.  The agnostic (a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, and Princeton Theological Seminary) is a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina.  From what I understood, he teaches graduate students to doubt that the Bible is an inspired, or at least inerrant, book.  His arguments against the resurrection boiled down to insisting that the gospels had contradictions and therefore couldn’t be trusted.  His examples were generally that since the four gospels give four different views of the life of Christ, they can’t possibly all be a correct view.  Unfortunately, no sufficient response was given concerning a harmony of the gospels.

I think there are also many believers who see apparent contradictions in the Bible and make little or no effort to solve them.  Calvinism and Arminianism; the holiness and the love of God; and law and grace are just a few that too many people don’t care to grapple with.  The one that affects us as much or more than any is the apparent contradiction between justification and sanctification, the dilemma of complete forgiveness of sin as opposed to the struggle against, and mortification of, sin.  Denominations have been formed from this apparent contradiction.  Some place too much sanctification in their justification, thus becoming antinomian (Free Grace and Evangelical Free movements); some place too much justification in their sanctification, thus becoming legalistic (Pentecostal and Holiness movements).

Can we handle two truths that seem to be conflicting but really aren’t?  Do we know that our sins are forgiven, removed as far as the east is from the west (Psa. 103:12), that He will remember our sins against us no more (Isa. 43:25), that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Rom. 5:20)?  But do we also know that we will one day stand at the Bema Seat of Christ to receive or lose rewards for things done in our body, whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5:10), that we may be beguiled out of our reward by false worship (Col. 2:18), that we may be saved so as by fire (by the skin of our teeth!) for sexual sins done while a Christian (1 Cor. 3:15; 5:5)?  The failure to understand and live with both the doctrine of justification as well as sanctification makes for a lopsided Christian.  Either he will live in fear of losing his salvation, or he will live as an antinomian.  Neither would be the Christian the Bible describes.

The world will never understand these intramural discussions among believers.  They can think only about scales of goodness and badness and spend their natural lives struggling back and forth to no avail.  But believers are made for the meat of the Word.  They have the mind of Christ and are obligated to study to show themselves approved in these things before God (2 Tim. 2:15).  To hide God-given truth in the ground is to receive no reward at all.

Our present desire to do away with doctrine, separation, and even holiness, is not healthy.  I’ve never been one for discarding denominational names because I believe a) the lost person doesn’t care, and b) this is an honest way of informing people before they come in of what you believe and how you operate.  These names usually describe a church’s polity or their conclusions about justification and sanctification.  In a biblically illiterate world, we need all the help we can get in educating people to the great doctrines of the Scriptures.

There are really four kinds of people found in the Bible if we count the lost and the saved.  These four, but especially the last two, show what we believe about salvation and godliness.

1. The lost man with no regard for anything religious.

We come across this man often in the Bible.  He is Cain or Korah, Sandballet or Tobiah, Simon the sorcerer or Bar-Jesus.  This is the spirit of antichrist that has always been present in the world.  They walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (Eph. 4:17-19).  They are to be pitied more than feared.  They are like blind men walking into things they do not see.  They are objects of God’s love, but have shunned His grace at every turn.  They become the enemies of the cross of Christ, Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19).

2. The lost man who is religious.

The Bible is also full of these men and women.  Sometimes they are religious hypocrites such as Jeroboam or Manasseh, the Pharisees and Sadducees, Judas and Alexander.  Like Simon, they are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity (Acts 8:23) and not even Peter could pray in their place before God.

Sometimes they are good people in the natural sense, with moral and religious inclinations who would be open to the gospel if they heard it.  Jethro did not know the God of Moses but loved the Hebrew people to whom his daughter had attached herself.  Rahab was quick to praise the Jewish spies in Jericho and to believe, as soon as she understood that salvation was of the Jews.  The Ethiopian Eunuch was a religious man seeking answers to Biblical questions, but lost in his sin until an evangelist could preach to him.  Cornelius prayed and fasted and sought God’s face without true knowledge until the time when God had His apostle prepared to speak the gospel to Gentiles.  Lydia went to prayer meeting regularly but was lost until the Lord opened her heart to the message of His missionary.  The Bereans searched the Scriptures daily to see if what they were hearing squared with their Scriptures, but were lost until Paul came and preached the true gospel to them.  Sergius Paulus was a prudent man who desired to hear the Word of God, and though Elymas sought to turn him away from the faith, he believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.

3. The saved man who is carnal.

It is possible for a Christian to be carnal.  Paul could not speak to the Corinthians in the way he desired because of their carnality (1 Cor. 3:1-3).  It kept them from even being able to receive the milk of the Word that they might grow.  The writer of Hebrews scolded his readers for their lack of desire to go on to heavier doctrine when they should have been teachers themselves.  In more pointed language John scolds the readers of his first epistle with severe consequences for living in carnality: inability to have fellowship with God, lack of assurance of salvation, lack of love for the brethren, and a lack of discernment regarding false teachers who were already among them.

Carnality may come from a lack of understanding about one’s position in Christ.  Not knowing whether one is saved or not will not bring victory in the Christian life.  The helmet of salvation is needed to keep the Christian soldier from ducking at every shot fired by the enemy.  Working to keep oneself saved is a discouraging occupation.

Carnality may come from a lack of time spent in God’s Word and prayer.  The filling of the Spirit is dependent on the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly in all wisdom (Col. 3:16).  Fellowship with the Father and with the Son is maintained by prayer because the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and His ears are opened to their prayers (1 Pet. 3:12).

Carnality results from trying to navigate this life with the self in control instead of God.  Sanctification is a work of God in our heart also.  Our flesh does not have the power in itself, even regenerated, to overcome the world.  As we yield to the Spirit of God, and as He teaches us through the Word of God, we grow strong in the Lord and the power of His might.

Carnality also results from thinking that all human effort to combat the flesh is unspiritual, that striving against sin is somehow a lower role in life than should be desired.  But it is not.  We are to be holy as He is holy, to put on armor that is made for battle, to pull down strongholds of opposition, to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

A carnal believer is still secure in Christ.  Sin cannot destroy the work of justification done in the heart.  But the sinning believer appears the same as the lost man, since salvation cannot be seen except by good works.  Without those Christian graces, you would not know that he is a believer except by his verbal testimony.  The Bema Seat of Christ alone will reveal the sin and carnality with which many believers have lived.

4. The saved man who is spiritual.

The Christian is a spiritual man as opposed to a natural man (1 Cor. 2:14-16).  Before he was saved he was by nature a child of wrath but now has been saved and changed by the Spirit of God (Eph. 2:3-5).  By “spiritual” we mean spiritually mature or strong rather than weak (Rom. 15:1), spiritually mature rather than a babe in Christ (1 Cor. 3:1).

The Bible presents the spiritually mature Christian as the normal Christian.  He may be a new child in Christ but knows full well his salvation, or a young man in Christ who is strong and fighting the battles of faith, or a father among believers who has walked with God from the beginning (1 John 2:12-14).  This is the brother whom we are to love and with whom we ought to desire fellowship (1 John 3:14-16).  It matters not whether the world of lost people love this man, since they did not love his Lord either (John 15:18).  He is the example to which every young believer and every carnal believer should strive.

The spiritual Christian knows that he is never above sin (1 John 1:10) and has a great respect for the old nature that still resides in him.  But this man has fought enough battles with the flesh to know where his strengths and weaknesses lie and he has walked enough years with his Lord to know where the victory comes from.  He has lost desire for earthly fame or reward but more and more looks not at things which can be seen but things which cannot (2 Cor. 4:18).  His wisdom is not from below but from above which begins with purity, then peacefulness, then gentleness.  Others find he is easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and hypocrisy (Jas. 3:17).

There is no lost person who can imitate this man for long, no more than a sparrow can imitate an eagle or a mouse a lion.  His life has a certain attractiveness about it that causes even the vilest of sinners to secretly desire its beauty.  It has a certain humbleness and meekness to it to encourage the strongest believer to hold fast to his Lord.  The spiritual man or woman is the real treasure in any culture.

And So . . . .

I am not and never have been for laying down our weapons of doctrinal warfare.  I am for fighting a good fight and not a bitter fight, of speaking the truth in love.  We know that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.  And none of us like hypocrites.  For identification, fellowship, and participation in ministry, we may at times seek for common denominators, but we don’t even know what those are unless we are constantly striving for truth in every jot and tittle, nor would we be safe in such an environment unless we were grounded and settled and not moved about by every wind of doctrine.

Our road begins at its broadest intersection of the great doctrines of justification and sanctification.  If we cannot navigate this cross-road, we will probably not be headed out in the right direction.  Once we settle this, we will enjoy our journey through the highways and byways of God’s Word and our walk in the Spirit.  If we get a little lost, we will always be able to return to this place and start again.

These things are not mere curiosity for the Christian.  They are his life and passion.  We must go and teach all nations . . . Baptizing them . . . Teaching them to observe all things,  And we can know that He is with us, even unto the end of the world (Matt. 28:19-20).

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Using and Abusing the Bible

Written by Rick Shrader

Using and Abusing the Bible

by Rick Shrader

I would think that anyone who values straight talk has a hard time of it during national election years.  Now, more than ever, politicians are looking for the right buzz word or the right connection to the latest polling data which will up his/her chances of being elected.  Every sentence, even every word, is scrutinized as to whether it will increase or decrease his/her ratings by a percentage point!  This year’s buzz word is “change.”  It hardly matters what the change is or where it would lead as long as it is change.  If it unites people and creates enthusiasm; if it appeals to the right cultural block; if it presents the candidate as visionary and idealistic; in other words, if it just gets votes, then this is where we must go!

Of course, the only sensible reply to change is whether it is good or bad.  And this question, considered in a sinful world, becomes even more critical.  There is no rut so deep as the supposed need for constant change.  In my reading I have collected a few of those priceless quotes from wise men who spoke of the futility of change for change’s sake.  Here are just a few:

C.S. Lewis:  “When changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support that new one will obediently turn up.  I do not at all mean that these new phenomena are illusory.  Nature has all sorts of phenomena in stock and can suit many different tastes.”1

G.K. Chesterton:  “In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss.  We were inclined to ask, ‘Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?’  But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right.  The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead.  The moss is silent because the moss is alive.”2

Charles Spurgeon:  “It is all too plainly apparent men are willing to forego the old for the sake of the new.  But commonly it is found in theology that that which is true is not new, and that which is new is not true.”3

This quote from Spurgeon was written during his important struggle in what he coined The Downgrade Controversy.  It is unique because we see clearly today that what is fashionable in the world is usually followed closely by the Church.  Michael Aeschlimen,  who studied the effect of liberalism on culture, observed, “But the compulsive spirit of innovation, the lust for change and the new, which Arnold and Newman fought in related ways in the educational realm, was a chief effect of the intoxications of scientism, and it has continued to increase in effect in many other areas of modern life.”4 This same thing has happened in the modern liberalism of the American political and religious landscapes of the twentieth century.

As we have begun the twenty-first century, the belief in change for change’s sake in religious matters is again reflecting the culture.  This is of far greater concern than politics because Christianity is THE revealed religion from God.  It is a body of truth that was set in propositional form by the Alpha and Omega.  We ought to expect, therefore, that Christianity in our day, more than any other religion in the world or in history, ought to look inherently like it did two thousand years ago.  But today’s Christian leaders don’t have the stomach for it.  Our generation is demanding change in the churches and they are getting it wholesale.  Is it for the better?  Ask Willow Creek’s own internal survey.  Of course, it isn’t.  And, it isn’t better in our fundamental churches either.

It seems that almost anyone who argues for change in the church uses either Nehemiah as a text from the Old Testament or Jesus’ parable of the new wine in old wine skins from the New Testament.  Often they will throw in the observation that Jesus displeased the Pharisees because, unlike them, He ate with publicans and sinners and this is something that they would never do.  As Lewis noted, when there is a hankering for change in society, sufficient phenomena will show up to support it. So also when there is a demand for change in the church (by those who have no intention of changing their lives themselves) sufficient chapters and verses will turn up to support it.

The New Wine and Old Wineskins

The account of the wineskins is an interesting picture in the gospels.  It seems to have the perfect wording for someone who is advocating doing away with old things and bringing in the new things.  It appears in the three synoptic gospels and is always coupled with the similar picture of trying to sew a new piece of cloth onto an old garment.  In Mark’s gospel (2:18-22), both are also coupled with the question of the attendants fasting at a wedding while the bridegroom is absent.  The contemporary use of these verses seems to be—when God gives a visionary leader a new or fresh vision for change, or when reaching the culture demands that new things be done in the church, these things cannot simply be attached to the traditional way of doing things.  The old things must be set aside and the new things must be done separately from the old.

Now, it is true perhaps that if we simply take the statements as truisms and apply them to garments, animal skins and wedding receptions, these observations would be correct.  And, if we make general observations about connecting new and old things in life, these same observations would often apply as well.  But is this exegesis of the passage or merely using the wording of the passage for our own purposes?  By the same method could we not preach the gospel from the poem of Mary and her little lamb?  It has all the words we need.  Was there no other purpose for Jesus saying things like this than to fill our files full of anecdotes to be used whenever they can bolster our arguments?

Jesus was offering Himself and His kingdom to the Jewish people  (this is clearly seen in the preceding analogy to fasting while the bridegroom is present rather than absent).  The law is being brought to an end.    With the rejection of the King and kingdom, the gospel dispensation is commencing and the law as a rule of life is definitely over.  Edersheim noted that “the new wine of the Kingdom [cannot] be confined in the old forms.  It would burst those wine-skins.”5 You cannot operate the new wine of the dispensation of grace (with the local church being the primary agency) by keeping the old wine skin of the Mosaic law.  Dwight Pentecost wrote, “The parables clearly indicate that Christ did not come to reform an old and worn out system but to introduce something new (cf. Heb. 8:13).”6 This is what the analogy of the wine and wineskins is teaching.

If the parables are used simply to support every new thing that comes along and to do away with every old thing that stands in the way, then the meaning of the passage is missed and only the wording of the passage is being used for someone’s personal agenda.  If I flipped through my Bible, trying to prove that suicide is biblical, and came up with:  “Judas went and hanged himself . . . . Go thou and do likewise . . . . What thou doest do quickly,” though I have used biblical words, I would not have discovered the biblical teaching about suicide.

The further irony of using this passage to support changes in the local church is that the church age is now 2000 years old and the local church will continue to be God’s plan until the second coming of Christ.  The local church now IS the old wine skin, and we are not to discard it until Jesus comes and establishes His kingdom.  That is, if we transfer the meaning of this passage to our situation today, rather than supporting changing the church, it supports retaining the church and its doctrines and practices that are now 2000 years old.

Nehemiah’s Building Project

I don’t think I’ve read a book on transitioning from a traditional church to a contemporary church without the author referring to the book of Nehemiah.  Usually, the whole book is taken from a series of lessons on Nehemiah that the author has given to his church.  Much is made of Nehemiah as a visionary who sees the need in Jerusalem and then goes through a series of wise steps to get the whole project done.  The application usually is this:  the pastor should pray for his specific vision for change from God; he should share it with a few people in his inner circle; he should then broaden than circle, being careful to indoctrinate new people to his personal vision carefully so they will come on board; he should reveal his vision to the whole congregation only after assurance has been found that the vision will definitely be adopted.  If opposition occurs he must try to bring those people into his way of thinking, but if he can’t, he must count the cost of losing those people for the betterment of the whole.  This is all done based on Nehemiah’s task of getting the temple in Jerusalem rebuilt.

Of course, we may find principles to live or work by in many passages of Scripture.  But we must be careful not to violate the meaning of the text, and also not to be so trivial with the principle that we, again, are just using the wording that we need.  Was Nehemiah doing something new that God was showing him?  In whatever way he prayed and asked God’s help and made his decision to do what he did, is this a direct parallel for a pastor receiving a unique vision for his ministry (and not necessarily anyone else’s) and then going about to change the local church?  Yes, we may see wise principles of leadership but is the book of Nehemiah a blueprint for local church polity?  The irony is that Nehemiah was not doing something new, he was rather rebuilding something old!  He was reestablishing proper Mosaic worship, something that had been destroyed because of Israel’s disobedience for the last 500 years.  We would do better to begin printing books based on Nehemiah on how to rebuild the traditional churches after they have been destroyed and taken into captivity by new methodology!  At least the overall intention of the book would be better served.

Eating With Publicans and Sinners

When Levi decided to follow Jesus, he invited the Lord and many of his own friends to a supper at his house.  Among these “Publicans and sinners” Jesus carried on a conversation that resulted in Him saying, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mark 2:17).  A common excuse for changing to a contemporary mode of local church polity is that Jesus reached out to sinners such as these.  Since the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with the sinners, they are made to represent the church members who object and (supposedly) don’t like these “unchurched” sinners in the church.

But can this passage be made to support such a proposition?  First, Jesus usually had to leave most houses He was invited into because He made sinners uncomfortable—a far cry from the contemporary church auditorium.  Second, it was the lost tax collectors that heard Him, saw themselves as sinners, repented, and changed their life-style—also a far cry from the contemporary church auditorium.  Third, it was the Pharisees, who would not see themselves as sinners and had no intention of changing, that even Jesus did not call to repentance.  They were too self-righteous to think they needed to be changed from what they were.  Yet these are the kind that seem to be filling today’s churches (where little or no repentance is preached).  This story does not condemn believers who changed when they were converted and have remained changed, but rather those who think they can come to Jesus without any change in their lives.

And So . . . .

Though we all have equal access to the infallible Scriptures, none of us are infallible interpreters.  We all need to be challenged to see if our conclusions really match the text.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

The Real Change

Written by Rick Shrader

The Real Change

by Rick Shrader

In the end times the apostasy of the age will creep into God’s church, sometimes in the form of blatant unbelief, but also in a coldness toward the things of God and a love for the things of the world.  While the world takes its downward spiral toward the coming judgment of God, the church seems to follow, not lock-step with the world, yet not too many steps behind.  Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis seems to work for human beings, whether as leaders of a corrupt generation, or imitators from afar.

The Parable

Your own generation has its thesis, that orthodoxy of belief and morals which have shaped the world in which you live (let’s say 1 on a scale of 10).  There is always a protest or rebellion, an antithesis (a 3 on a scale of 10) promoting those things that have always been disdained and usually rejected.  But once the younger generation has been exposed to the rebellion, the original thesis becomes old and out of date.  At that point a synthesis is formed (a 2 on a scale of 10), not taking that generation all the way to the extreme of the antithesis, but settling rather on a convenient in-between place—the synthesis.  Once the older generation gets over its “fussing and complaining” about compromise everyone can settle into the new way of thinking.

As the younger generation gets older their wonderful synthesis (the 2), which they once found to be so exciting, new, and different, has, out of shear time, become their own thesis.  Because the world is what it is, a new form of protest obediently comes along, another antithesis (this time a 4 on a scale of 10) to rebel against their thesis (the 2).  Now the parents know not to be alarmed at this challenge.  They have seen it in their own youth and realize that it never catches on.  They watch, amusingly, as their children rebel, complain, push back at the older thesis (the 2) and then settle into their own new found synthesis (now the 3).  The parents are even proud of their children for sowing their wild oats and then coming up with their own way of doing things.  Grandparents remain skeptical.

Now this third generation begins to get older also.  They didn’t really think it would happen to them but it has.  They have enjoyed living in their synthesis (the 3) which they made but now they must realize that their wonderful synthesis has unfortunately, like their fathers before them, become the thesis of their generation (the 3).  They are even a little shocked to discover that there are some who would protest against their present thesis (3).  After all, their thesis (a 3) is the same as the original antithesis (the old 3).  But now a new antithesis (now a 5) has come along and all the kids are screaming and clamoring over it.  But wait, the thesis (3) remembers how this happened before.  It’s a sort of metamorphosis that evidently must continue generation after generation, almost in a religious way.  This is change, progress, a necessary molding of generations into peaceful cooperation.  So the parents again watch with pride and certain nostalgia as their children play with the new antithesis (5) and then, almost predictably, settle into their new synthesis (this time a 4).

But, you guessed it, even this fourth generation watches themselves get older.  They have been a 4 for a long time.  They don’t even remember anyone who was a 2, much less a 1.  What was unimaginable to the 1st generation, so far from the first antithesis, is now normal.  And, you guessed it again, a new antithesis (now a 6) dutifully pops up and the new generation of parents watch with anticipation as their children imitate the once unimaginable and eventually create their new synthesis (now a 5) . . . And the dialectic repeats itself over and over again.  Its only motto:  Change!  Oh, did I forget to define “dialectic” by the dictionary?  I’m sorry: “The Hegelian process of change in which an entity passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite” (Webster’s 7th).

The Observation

It is the day after Super Tuesday.  Conservatives did not do so well in the most important primary day of the election season.  Within the “conservative” Republican party there seems to be three groups of people.  There are the Reagan conservatives who are trying desperately to make their case for the core values of their movement. Some even argue for a static constitution in the midst of changing ideas.  At the same time John McCain is proposing a new kind of conservatism that is drawing lots of protests from the Reagan conservatives.  It appears more like an anti-conservative position.  Mike Huckabee is trying to find some middle ground between the two.  He is hoping that the party is ready for an agreeable middle.   But it seems that the party is ready to go all the way with the new “conservative” look of McCain.

Liberal commentators and other Democrats can’t understand the problem that conservative Republicans have with McCain.  Good grief, they think, John McCain IS conservative (and compared to them this is true).  But the Democratic party is taking liberalism far beyond what is acceptable even to McCain (we hope!).  Today the Reagan conservatives were trying desperately, on radio, TV and the Internet, to make their case.  It has been hard for them to explain to the liberal media why they are so alarmed by John McCain and dissatisfied with Mike Huckabee’s middle of the road position.  They come across as mean-spirited, whiners, selfish people who aren’t willing to give and take for the betterment of the country.  For some reason, they just can’t seem to give up on (or at least reinterpret) their old Reagan conservative values.

Of course, these conservatives were, not too long ago, the innovators and revolutionaries.  But their antithesis, even synthesis has become an old worn-out thesis that young people can’t bring themselves to adopt.  Obama will win the day.  Why?  Because he has good ideas?  No, he has no ideas that I have heard.  But he will win the day because he is the antithesis to all that has gone before.  He only has to cry “change” and younger voters will obediently follow.  “Unity,” “Freshness,” “Vitality,” whatever, but thoughtful ideas are not really necessary to win elections.

The Application

I said at the beginning that the churches follow the culture just a few steps behind.  It may be that they follow very closely but just travel on parallel tracks.   They go through the same dialectic generation after generation but talk in religious, not political, terms.  What was once considered religious liberalism now is accepted as orthodoxy.  Older Christians, who have seen the compromises of the past, are alarmed by the cry for change in churches, in life-styles, and in other doctrinal convictions.  As long as it is change, no one seems to care what the change is to or from.

I’ve said before that it is much easier to be the liberal in the crowd than the conservative.  The liberal always appears to be the thinker, the innovator, the one with vision.  The conservative just gets on everyone’s nerves.  He is always trying to draw in the reins, to caution not just to change for change’s sake, because he knows you’ll have to do it again soon.  And the conservative is usually older, and necessarily so.  He has to have been around long enough to have seen these things happen before.  If you’re the liberal in the crowd, you can just laugh at your conservative brother because you think he is silly or nit-picky.  But if you are the conservative, you know you have been put in a compromising position and that is no laughing matter.

Someone pointed out that McCain is very conservative compared to either of the democratic candidates and therefore conservatives should not complain.  But that is no consolation to the political conservative.  He knows his core values are being slowly but surely eroded, that his thesis is quickly becoming a synthesis.  Similarly, conservative Christians are often reminded that Rick Warren and others are conservative also when compared to atheists, agnostics and blatant liberals.  In the whole world of viewpoints anyone who calls himself an evangelical seems conservative.  But that is no consolation to a truly conservative Christian.  He sees his core convictions and the details of his doctrine being slowly given away and he knows that somehow he must stop that from happening.

What is most difficult for the conservative political observer is to hear platitudes and “positive” language when, in fact, nothing of substance is being said.  You see crowds of young people cheering for Obama because he speaks like a cheerleader or an activist and yet few policies are being delineated or positions taken, just promises made for something new.  When money from the rich is promised to the crowd or when they are assured our troops will no longer be fighting, hands are raised, tears begin to flow, and dancing begins.

It becomes very difficult in the church to ask the youth and spiritually immature to take a lower seat, to not assume to lead the fathers in worship, to accept the fact that worldliness cannot be overcome by talent.  Sometimes it is difficult for parents to admit that the worldly ways of their children disqualifies them from  leading in worship even if it would keep Johnny in church a little longer.

Unlike politics, the church cannot say one thing and do another.  Its message is intrinsically linked to its actions.  A politician can ask you to vote a certain way because it will make life easier or cause you to be happy in some way you haven’t been before.  But Christianity must present its message as truth whether it will profit you in this life or not, whether it will make you happy or not.  It will never win a popularity contest or attract the ungodly.  It is not enough fun for that.  Attendance averages have never been the point of God’s House.  Few people can worship just as truly and richly as many people, maybe better.  But politics and showmanship must have attendance and votes, and those can usually be bought.

And So . . . .

There is one large and dynamic difference between the world and the church.  That is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The church does not dictate to or bargain with Him, He leads the church.  He absolutely will not lead contrary to His Word or to the Father’s will.  He is as a dove which desires the dry and quiet places.  His job is to restrain sin in the world, not promote it or flirt with it.  He seeks and desires humility and backwardness and resists the proud and haughty spirit.

Because of the Spirit the church can repent.  It does not have to always create the synthesis or continue sliding into the antithesis.  It can confess its sin and return to the thesis.  The Godhead is the same today as He was yesterday or the first day He created the world.  His values have not changed nor any aspect of His character or person.  If He deals differently with people in different dispensations, He still cannot change who He is, what He thinks, or what is truth.  Sinners must come back to Him.  He will convict, persuade, and draw but He will not give and take.

We may ask whether our thesis is the right one.  There is only one way to find out—by whether or not it is Biblical!  When it is pointed out to us that “then it becomes a matter of interpretation,” we should answer, “Yes, of course, it does!  It is our responsibility to read, translate, interpret, and rightly apply the Word to every situation in every generation.  But giving up is no option.”  The Spirit will always act in accordance with the Word which He wrote.  He is eternally the same and so is His Word.  When we meditate on it and become convicted that worldliness is not pleasing to Him, and become convinced of the truth we should proclaim, then let us turn from our sins and practice that which is pleasing to God.

The world is not our standard.  It will continually find new measures for its truth.  This postmodern generation may be the one which ushers in the Anti-Christ himself; one which believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thes 2:12); one which is deceived because they received not the love of the truth (vs 10).  The church of Jesus Christ has the Spirit in its heart and the Word of God in its hand: let us be a standard for truth in our own generation!

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Judgment – The Forgotten Prophecy

Written by Rick Shrader

Judgment – The Forgotten Prophecy

by Rick Shrader

Jude recorded, And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jude 14-15).    James M. Boice wrote:  “The more Enoch was aware of the judgment, the more sensitive he was to sin.  The more sensitive he was to sin, the closer he wanted to walk with God.  The closer he walked with God, the more necessary he saw that judgment was.”1

Within my short lifetime I have seen attitudes change from when fundamental and evangelical preachers preached about judgment and hell even to teenagers at youth camps, to these days when the churches are so religiously correct that judgment is too negative to mention, especially to young people.  Besides just being a negative doctrine, the coming judgment is questioned altogether as to its very truthfulness.  One can now be an “evangelical” and deny that hell even exists!  Many simply believe that it is unprofitable to teach such an undesirable doctrine to a generation looking for a positive experience from attending church.

I would not deny, of course, that the great majority of fundamental brethren and most evangelicals still believe in a literal hell and a coming judgment.  We have, however, let this doctrine fade away in our preaching, writing, and general vocabulary.  A quick search on Google with the entry “The Biblical doctrine of judgment” was telling.  The first entry was a Leon Morris article from 1960.  The second entry was a review of that article by a Seventh Day Adventist (who denies a literal hell).  The third entry was an article by T.B. Thayer in 1855 which denies a literal hell.  The fourth entry was from a universalist in 1844.  The fifth entry is a reprint of a 1908 journal from the University of Chicago.  The sixth entry was another Seventh Day Adventist article.  Although there were pages upon pages of other entries, one had to look diligently for a current, clear-cut message about God’s coming judgment.

I have five volumes that record the first five Fundamental Baptist Congresses of North America that fell between 1963 and 1974.  In every congress there was a message on the coming judgment of God and the literal punishment God would mete out.  Two of them were by my pastor, John Rawlings, whom I heard preach on the subject not a few times in my boyhood.  In the first edition from 1963, John Holliday preached “Final Judgment and Eternal Hell.”  In that message he said, “This challenging, convicting Bible doctrine is of immense significance.  It belongs not to the fringe but to the warp and woof of Christianity.  The modern tendency to exclude it altogether, or at best to relegate it to the inconsequential suburbs of the city of Truth, is an evidence of today’s doctrinal deterioration.”2 What an indictment that is for our day when the situation has worsened tenfold!

No doubt Enoch, who walked with God, was moved by that walk to preach about God’s coming judgment.  Noah also walked with God and found grace in God’s eyes (Gen. 6:8-9) and became a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5) who warned the world of God’s impending judgment.  But backslidden Lot vexed his righteous soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked (2  Pet. 2:7-8) and could not bring himself to warn Sodom of God’s displeasure and wrath.  Such will be preaching at the end of the age.

Judgment has become the forgotten prophecy because we have neglected certain truths which dictate that judgment is necessary.

God is Holy

Though all believers profess this belief, it obviously does not permeate the hearts and minds of many.  It is hard for us to comprehend the depth of a statement such as, God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5) or Be ye holy; for I am holy (1 Pet 1:16).   Do we take seriously God’s requirements for entering into His presence?  Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?  Or who shall stand in his holy place (Psa 24:3)?  And even with our knowledge of justification by faith, do we realize how blood bought believers ought to serve Him?  Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:28-29).

God cannot violate His own holy character.  He will not overlook sin nor simply dismiss one’s sins in the judgment as if one attribute of His can override another.  Holiness demands payment for sin. If the sinner will not come to God by Christ, then he will pay himself for his sin in hell, a payment which must endure as long as God’s holiness endures.

Sin is Serious

Sin cannot be treated as a virus which may be contracted by accident and may be cured by diligent care.  Rather,  There is none righteous, no not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one (Rom 3:10-12).  Nor can we, by wishing and pleading, close the moral gap between ourselves and God.  Rather, Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear (Isa 59:2).

Both Peter and Jude plead for people in the end of the world to remember that God cannot overlook sin.  He has severely judged it in the past and He will do so in the future.  If He eternally punished fallen angels; if He violently destroyed a world of people in the flood; if He instantly burned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; if He drowned the blaspheming Egyptians in the sea; then He will not fail to treat mankind’s sin with equal severity at the end of the age.

God is Vengeful

Vengeance by a sinful creature is sin in itself, but vengeance by a holy God is right and necessary.  For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord.  And again, The Lord shall judge his people.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:30-31).  The writer was alluding to the Psalmist who wrote, O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself.  Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud (Psa 94:1-2).  God spoke to Moses of all of Israel’s sins that would be recompensed in the last days, Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?  To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste (Deut 32:34-35).

Perhaps some think that such attitudes belong only to a God of past ages, that God has now become pacified toward sin because He is also a God of love and grace.  Yet in the coming Tribulation when God brings all nations to the valley of Megiddo, the Lord will fight them with the sword of His mouth for he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God (Rev 19:15).

Hell is Terrible

The doctrine of hell surpasses all human comprehension in its awfulness and vastness.  While it ought to make the hardest sinner pause before performing his deeds in God’s sight, it  at least makes the believer thankful for grace, awed before God, and even urgent in evangelism.  As much as some strain to remove the awful doctrine from scripture, they face one insurmountable problem—it is plainly there!

John’s vantage point while writing the book of Revelation was manifold.  He looked back and saw all of earth’s history; he looked down at great tribulation on the earth; he looked forward into endless eternity.  There he saw both heaven and hell:  both were real, both were eternal, and both were filled with human souls whose destiny is fixed forever.  Of those who die without salvation in Christ he wrote, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night (Rev 14:10-11).  This and many more passages clearly show hell is real, hot, and eternal.

Grace is Proffered

We are saved by grace and that grace is made available to all.  But grace must be applied if it is to free the sinner from God’s judgment.  Many seem to think that because God loved the world, and because Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, that the whole world has been removed as objects of God’s wrath.  Yet these prophecies of future wrath and eternal judgment concern a time more than two thousand years after the cross of Calvary.  Grace is proffered to the world which God loved, but it must be applied if it is to save.

It is wonderfully true that God’s wrath has been removed through the sacrifice of Christ.  He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).  The payment has been made; the substitution has occurred.  For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1 Pet 3:17).  But Isaiah said, in the great fifty-third chapter, when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand (Isa 53:10).  Paul also made it clear that the gift of grace must be received, For if by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17).

The same chapter that says that God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, also says, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him (John 3:35).  Although God loves the world of people and Jesus died for them, they must be born again if they would enter the Kingdom of God.

Judgment is Future

It is striking to read the Old Testament prophecies of the judgment of God and to realize that you are reading something that is yet in our future.  The great day of the LORD is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.  That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness (Joel 1:14-15).  But even more sobering is to read the book of Revelation describe those at the White Throne judgment being “cast” into the lake of fire because their names are not in the book of life (Rev 20:11-15).  The Psalmist said, The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God (Psa 9:17).  That dreadful day is coming for all lost people, small and great.  They will be “cast” and “turned” into hell, shunned by their very Creator.

And So . . . .

We are reminded that judgment, the forgotten prophecy, must be remembered again.  It is nearer than when we first believed (Rom 13:11); we are the ones upon whom the end of the world is come (1 Cor 10:11); we are to be admonishing one another even more as we see the day approaching (Heb 10:25); God is being longsuffering because He is not willing that any should perish but instead come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9).  Let us be steadfast and unmovable because such labor is not in vain in the Lord (1 Cor 15:58).

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand (Rev 6:17)?

Notes:
1. B.F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John (Grand Rapids:  Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964) 11.
2. Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology (Wheaton:  Victor Books, 1987) 245.
3. Arthur W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1971) 32.
4. Quoted by E.W. Hengstenberg, The Gospel of John (Minneapolis:  Klock & Klock, 1980) 46.
5. E.W. Henstenberg, Ibid., 47.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Christ the Incarnate Word

Written by Rick Shrader

Christ the Incarnate Word

by Rick Shrader

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

 

Christ, by highest heaven adored;

Christ, the everlasting Lord!

Late in time behold Him come,

Offspring of the Virgin’s womb:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail the incarnate Deity,

Pleased as man with men to dwell,

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

Hark! The herald angels sing

“Glory to the new-born King.”

(“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”—Charles Wesley)

We ought to remember that Christmas and Easter are distinctively Christian holidays.  We know that there have been various pagan customs mixed in over the years, but we are able to remove what is foreign to the Christian message and keep what is vital. Satan’s attacks today remain as subtle and yet ferocious as ever.  The great imitator of Christ has exalted the many world religions to equal prominence with Christianity even in (so-called) Christian countries like America.  But with even greater subtlety he has created great antipathy toward the Christmas and Easter message by redefining tolerance into intolerance for anything that claims to be absolute truth.

Christianity, of course, specifically and uniquely proclaims that it is the  only way to God and heaven.  It claims that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God and that no one comes to God but by acceptance of Him as the only Savior and His atoning work on their behalf.  Christianity’s claim of Christ’s incarnation through virgin birth as well as His death, burial, and bodily resurrection makes it an “all or nothing” belief system.  No other religion rises or falls on specific miracles.  Theirs is based on moral teaching and good works.  Christianity is based on whether or not God became a man.

To the postmodern mind this is as narrow and bigoted as you can get! How can Christianity claim to be the only belief system that can take one to heaven?  Many think this way of thinking should be a hate crime in America.  If you claim to be right and someone else wrong, then you are setting yourself up as better than the other person and therefore think you are superior to them.  As illogical as it may seem, claiming to have absolute truth, especially in religion, is equal to hate in many peoples’ minds.

Each year Christmas and Easter force this issue.  Saying that God became a man only once in the Person of Jesus Christ; and that Jesus Christ is the only Person to have risen from the dead (thereby proving that He was indeed the God-man), is the exact equivalent to John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me, or to Acts 4:12, Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.  It is this exclusivity about Christianity that our generation simply cannot tolerate.

Of course, Christianity is actually both inclusive and exclusive.  It is inclusive in its provision, offer, and application of salvation.  Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16); For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Romans 10:13).  But it is also exclusive in that no one can come to God except through Jesus Christ.  This is the factual and historic Christmas and Easter message.

No biblical statement is clearer about the uniqueness of the Christian message than John 1:14.  Westcott said that this verse is “absolutely unique.  The phrases which point towards it in St. John (1 John iv.2), in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii. 14), and in St. Paul (Rom. viii.3; Phil ii.7; I Tim. iii.16) fall short of the majestic fullness of this brief sentence.”1 Here, by this one verse, all religions fall short, all religious leaders fade into oblivion, all spiritual thought becomes dumb before the infinite divine Word who became flesh on that first Christmas morning.

 

The Word

The subject of the sentence has been John’s subject from verse one.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).  From eternity this Logos was; without beginning, without ending, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (Mic. 5:2).  His name is Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).  Throughout eternity He existed with God.  He was preexistent because He was eternal.  But most startling and unique, this Logos was God!  Charles Ryrie wrote,

Without the Incarnation we would have no Savior.  Sin requires death for its payment.  God does not die.  So the Savior must be human in order to be able to die.  But the death of an ordinary man would not pay for sin eternally, so the Savior must also be God.  We must have a God-Man Savior and we do in our Lord (Heb. 10:1-10).2

The fact of Christ’s deity has been offensive to Satan from the beginning and will be offensive to his antichrist yet in the future, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God (2 Thes. 2:4).  And this is why the truth of Christmas is still offensive to non-Christians today.  The mere fact of the Word existing eternally before becoming a man is absolutely unique.

Was Made Flesh

What did begin on the first Christmas morning was the humanity of Jesus Christ.  The eternal Second Person of the Godhead made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7).  Whereas in verses 1 and 2, speaking of the eternal Logos, four times we read that He was, now, speaking of His humanity, we read egeneto, He became.  Arthur Pink wrote,

The Infinite became finite.  The Invisible became tangible.  The Transcendent became imminent.  That which was far off drew nigh.  That which was beyond the reach of the human mind became that which could be beholden within the realm of human life.  Here we are permitted to see through a veil that, which unveiled, would have blinded us.  ‘The word became flesh:’ He became what He was not previously.  He did not cease to be God, but He became Man.3

Without ceasing to be divine He became human.  No less God and no less man.  Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing, and yet Jesus Lord at thy birth.  Isaiah felt no contradiction in proclaiming, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and calling Him The mighty God, The Everlasting Father (Isa. 9:6).  Neither did Wesley feel a contradiction in singing, Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity!

Never will the world understand this hypostatic union apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit of God.  The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14).

 

And Dwelt Among Us

For a short time the God-Man dwelt on the earth.  He tabernacled among us; lived a tent-life during His brief trip away from Home.  The Royal Son had no pillow for His head, was touched with the feelings of our infirmities; and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15).  It’s not that the humanity itself was a temporary tabernacle.  Christ had a body after His resurrection too, one fit for the next life.  We also temporarily have flesh fit for this life.  But mortality will one day be swallowed up of life, corruption will put on incorruption, mortal will put on immortality and we shall be changed!  (1 Cor 15:53-54).

Jesus took His humanity back to heaven with Him at His resurrection and ascension.  But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.  Wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.  For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens (Heb. 7:24-26).  Our humanity will go into heaven with us too.  But whereas the God-Man could raise Himself from death and take His humanity to heaven by His own power, we must attach ourselves to Him by faith if we are to be raised.

For a while Christ’s tent looked like our tent.  It was fit for folding also.  It was given to Him for the purpose of dying!  Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me . . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all (Heb. 10:5, 10).

 

And We Beheld His Glory

Now and then His followers caught a glimpse of the body to come!  When we were with him on the holy mount, Peter says, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty (2 Peter 1:16, 18).  No one, having seen such Christmas truth, could desire this life over the next.  Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance (vs 13) became Peter’s message.

John was on that mount.  He was also in the boat when Jesus came walking on the water, and when He commanded the storm to obey Him, when by miracle He brought heaven close to earth, His glory shining through from the inside of the tent.  John beheld it all.  It was a theomai, a “theater” of spectacular sights like a display of shooting stars against the still dark night.

 

The Glory as of the only begotten of the Father Full of Grace and Truth

This is the first time John calls the Word the only begotten.  Luther wrote,

In this thou hearest clearly and distinctly that the Word which was from everlasting with the Father, and is the light of men, is called the Son, yea, the only begotten Son of God. . . . God has many other sons and children, but only One is the only-begotten, of whom it is said, that all was made by Him: the other sons are not the Word, by which all things were made; but they were created by this only-begotten Son, who, like the Father, is the Creator of heaven and earth.  The others all become sons by this only-begotten Son, who is our Lord and God, and we are called many-begotten sons: but this is alone the only-begotten Son, whom He was begotten in the Godhead from everlasting.4

John does not use the word “grace” very often.  His emphasis is much more on “truth.”  We worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).  Though we call this the age of grace, and surely it is, John sees it as an age when truth has been fully revealed.  Darkness is past and true light is now shining.  And Jesus, the Word, the God-Man is the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world (John 1:9).  By this incarnate Deity, as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (vs 12).  As one writer put it, “He is entirely what He is; as it were, thoroughly God; therefore is never behind the expectations which His own cherish of Him—gives no promises which He does not keep, awakes no hopes which He does not satisfy, never forsakes His own in times of difficulty.”5 What grace!

 

And So . . . .

Let the world’s religions say what they will but envy what we say:

Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this   happy morning,

Jesus, to Thee be all glory given;

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

Oh come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

 

Notes:
1. B.F. Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John (Grand Rapids:  Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1964) 11.
2. Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology (Wheaton:  Victor Books, 1987) 245.
3. Arthur W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1971) 32.
4. Quoted by E.W. Hengstenberg, The Gospel of John (Minneapolis:  Klock & Klock, 1980) 46.
5. E.W. Henstenberg, Ibid., 47.
 

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

Preaching and Singing the Gospel

Written by Rick Shrader

Preaching and Singing the Gospel

by Rick Shrader

I just read an online article by a young man (by his own description) who went out of his way to criticize most gospel preaching and singing for the last two or three hundred years.  He believes that once preaching and singing left the Puritan and/or Reformation tradition, it was  down hill from there.  Interestingly, this was all to criticize contemporary Christian music to any who use it today.  His point was that CCM is totally pragmatic and shallow,  but that we should not be surprised because the precursors of this have been evident for hundreds of years in popular preaching and gospel singing.  His specific targets were D. L. Moody and his song leader Ira Sankey, Billy Sunday and his song leader Homer Rodeheaver, and especially the revivalist Charles Finney.  The writer’s own Baptist background was also roundly criticized as being non-theological, shallow, and entertainment based.

Interestingly, proponents of CCM heartily agreed with his assessment of the history and only disagreed that CCM is a direct result of it.  Both sides did the typical venting about growing up in dead, cold fundamental churches. But, of course, they have moved away from those things now that they’ve seen the error of the entire fundamental (especially Baptist),    gospel preaching, and gospel singing history.

One hardly knows where to begin to reply to these kinds of charges.  I also grew up in fundamental Baptist churches in the last half of the twentieth century and was not bored at all!  I was saved during a church     invitation at eleven years old in a fundamental, gospel preaching and singing Baptist church. After I learned some things, I was baptized there when I was sixteen.  God called me to preach and I started my ministry education directly out of high school.  I have had my disagreements even with my home church in which I was converted     because of its contemporary changes, but I have grown to love and appreciate my fundamental and Baptist      heritage more and more over the years.  I believe that the very history that the aforementioned writer described, has been the greatest force for the gospel of Christ in the last two to three hundred years.  Take away the souls saved, the churches built, the schools started, the missionaries sent, the revivals experienced by “gospel” preaching and singing over this period of time (in England and America alone), and it would be hard to estimate the spiritual carnage that would have resulted!

For many of this generation (who call  themselves “young” fundamentalists), there seems to be no place for the fundamentalism of the last  couple  of centuries even though it is their own history. Apparently, the only two options are to go back to a High Calvinistic, Reformed model of preaching and singing, or to go the other direction, totally beyond any historical roots to the current malaise of contemporary churches.  But one sure thing keeps coming back from these discussions; there is no love lost on the church that most of us have known and loved and in which we’ve served Christ.

This article is a result of my own reflection (after reading the online article) of things I have read and places I have visited as I have learned about my fundamental and Baptist history.  In England, especially, I have seen the truly dead liturgical Protestantism, as well as the cold history of High Calvinism.  But I have also experienced the worldliness and irreverence of the contemporary churches on both sides of the Atlantic.  Neither of these, in my opinion, is a viable alternative for gospel preaching and singing.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Best known for his classic book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan was also a powerful Baptist preacher in a time when nonconformists were persecuted by the Protestant Church of England.  Knowing God’s call upon him to preach, he refused to use the Book of Common Prayer instead of the Bible and for this he spent over 18 years in prison.  Born in poverty, Bunyan’s lowly job was that of a tinker, mending metal pots and utensils for whatever people could pay.

Despite misfortunes in life, and perhaps because of them, Bunyan knew his Bible well.  One historian says, “As in his Pilgrim he embodies more of the Bible than does Milton in his Paradise Lost, so in his sermons we find more true human nature than in Shakespeare.”1 On one of his preaching trips to London the learned Puritan John Owen heard him preach.  “When King Charles expressed wonder that a man of his 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.”2 God’s continued use of Bunyan’s preaching and writing is a fact of history.

Robert and James Haldane (1760s-1850s)

With John Knox long since dead and the Presbyterian Church long since established as the Church of Scotland, Baptists began to grow in small groups but with various forms of church order.  The Haldane brothers became Baptist by conviction regarding believer’s immersion and simple congregational church government.  Robert was the theologian and James, the pastor.  In their desire to reach the masses in central Scotland, especially Edinburgh, they established Baptist Tabernacles for preaching.  Some of these preaching centers were in a building called the “Circus.”  In his biography, son Alexander describes their services:

The Circus first, and then the Tabernacle, were crowded by thronging multitudes, hanging upon the preacher’s lips, joining with earnestness in the prayers, singing the praises of the Lord with their whole hearts, remaining during long services without wearying, and retiring in solemn silence, afraid, as it were to desecrate the place where the Lord himself was present, and that presence was felt.3

Their church, the Charlotte Baptist Chapel, is still a large gospel preaching church and has been pastored by such preachers as Graham Scroggie and J. Sidlow Baxter and Alister Begg.

D. L. Moody (1837-1899)

More people are familiar with this American evangelist than almost any other American religious figure.  He is well-known for his humble beginnings, that he was converted when he was just a shoe-shine boy, and that his mother was of New England Puritan stock.  Because of his zeal for soul-winning and direct style of preaching, hundreds of thousands of souls are in heaven today.  It is almost strange to hear of Moody’s motives and manners being questioned by young men desiring to preach the gospel.

Moody met Ira Sankey in a most unique way.4 In 1870 Moody was in Indianapolis to speak at a local church.  At the same time, Sankey was in Indianapolis to attend a pastors’ conference on evangelism which was being held nightly at 7:00pm at the Academy of Music.  Sankey wanted to hear Moody while he was in town, so one night he went to that church      service and the two met for the first time.  Moody asked Sankey to meet him downtown the next afternoon.  When they met, Moody placed a large box on the street corner and asked Sankey to sing a song, to which Sankey obliged.  Then Moody stepped on the box and began to preach to the multitude of factory workers leaving the factories.  The crowd was so large that they had to move into the Academy of Music. Thousands heard Sankey sing and Moody preach and many were  converted.  A humorous anecdote is that Moody’s “congregation” was forced to leave before 7:00pm so the ministers’ meeting on how to evangelize could begin on time!

When Moody and Sankey  traveled in Scotland, the reception was initially cold until the people attended the services, then “his simple and scriptural style of preaching soon won them.”5 Sankey, of Scotch-Irish stock himself and born in Edinburgh, was  allowed to use an organ with which to sing.  He wrote his “Ninety and Nine” just for the Scottish meetings.  When   I preached in a Scottish Baptist church just outside Edinburgh in the summer of 2004, the congregation was asked for favorites to sing.  Immediately, a woman said, “Sing our song, the ‘Ninety and Nine.’” It is no wonder that when Moody died, Lord Overtoun sent a telegraph to Chicago: “All Scotland mourns.”

John A. Broadus (1827-1894) and A. T. Robertson (1863-1934)

Broadus and Robertson were the two greatest American Greek Scholars of their day.  They were early Southern Baptists and largely responsible for starting Southern Baptist Seminary.  Robertson became Broadus’ son-in-law when he married his youngest daughter, Ella.

Because of their well-known scholarship, their evangelistic desires are often over-looked.  Both men carried on extensive preaching ministries in churches, meetings and, in Broadus’ case, to the troops during the Civil War.  Stonewall Jackson himself invited Broadus to come and preach among the troops in the evening camps.  Broadus described himself as “a missionary in General Lee’s army.”  In those evenings, Robert E. Lee and other dignitaries often attended.  And, of those meetings, a few letters have survived:

Many wept during the sermons, and not at allusions to home, but to their sins, and God’s great mercy. . . . Gilmer is dreadfully opposed to inviting men forward to prayer, etc., though Lacy, Hoge, and most of the Presbyterians, do it just like the rest of us. . . . The songs, simple old hymns, containing the very marrow of the gospel, were sung ‘with the spirit and the understanding,’ and stirred every heart. . .  At the close of the service they came by the hundreds to ask an interest in the prayers of God’s people, or profess a new-found faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I doubt not that our beloved brother has greeted on the other shore not a few who heard him that day or at other points in the army.6

Robertson, largely responsible for organizing the London Baptist World Congress and other such preaching meetings, was himself a   motivating speaker.  By his own     testimony, “the greatest single evangelistic service” of his life was in the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City.  His biographer describes it:

The soul of the great scholar was manifestly filled and swept along by the Spirit of God.  He was telling the story of the life of Christ.  At length he left the pulpit.  He walked the aisles.  He lifted his face and voice to the    galleries.  Back and forth he went pleading with his hearers to come to Christ.  The result was that about ninety young people and others gave their hearts and lives to the Lord that day. . . .  When asked by a friend what his text was, Dr. Robertson replied simply: ‘I had no text.  I told them the story of Jesus.’  That day was reward enough for a life-time’s labor.7

And So . . . .

I would not propose for a  minute that any of us would agree  with everything any of these preachers and singers did or said.  I myself would have to separate from many     of their associations.  I was prepared also to tell similar true stories of    Billy Sunday, C. H. Spurgeon, George Whitfield, and even John and Charles Wesley.  If one wants to find points of disagreement with these men, he will not need to look far.  Almost all of them were considered unpolished and unorthodox in their day.  But for young men today, sitting behind their computer screens, to write them off as   uneducated, shallow, and simply entertaining is to shut themselves off from the history of the Gospel itself.  While reading these histories and biographies, I have often thought that these styles and methods would not be     unusual in today’s world at all.  What would be unusual is the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit’s power and moving upon sinners, and the earnest, direct singing of the church’s (not the world’s and not the priest’s) music.  God help us to find our own path back to true gospel preaching and singing.

Notes:
1. Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists (Minneapolis:  Klock & Klock, 1976) 476.
2. Ibid.  This story appears in most Bunyan biographies.
3. Alexander Haldane, The Lives of Robert & James Haldane (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1990) 244.
4. A.P. Fitt, The Life of D.L. Moody (Chicago:  Moody Press, nd) 71.
5. Ibid
6. A.T. Robertson, The Life and Letters of John A. Broadus (Philadelphia:  American Baptist Pub. Soc., 1910) 208-209.
7. Everett Gill, A.T. Robertson, A Biography (New York:  MacMillan, 1943) 104-105.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More

The Emerging Church Phenomenon

Written by Rick Shrader

The Emerging Church Phenomenon

by Rick Shrader

We have been studying Postmodernism for twenty years.  Christian writers and non-Christian writers alike sounded a note of alarm at what the effects of this cultural paradigm shift would be upon the Church.  In 1996, James White proposed, “Now a new tidal wave, called by the scholars postmodernity, is sweeping across Western thought, undermining the very idea of absolute truth.  What should be the response of the Christian church in the face of these waves of philosophical attack?”1 In 1999, Dan Story wrote, “This post-Christian and postmodern world holds to the premise that there are no absolute truths that apply to everyone equally.  Christianity and Christian ethics are no longer relevant.  In fact, orthodox Christians are seen as bigoted, narrow-minded, and anti-intellectual because we refuse to accept other religions as ‘paths to God’ or to consider homosexuality, pornography, or abortion as permissible in a moral society.”2

Non-Christians were often more pointed in their criticisms of postmodernism than Christians.  Alan Wolfe, in the October 2000 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, wrote, “Postmodernism exercises such a fascination over the evangelical mind, I believe, because of the never-ending legacy of fundamentalism.  In one sense evangelical scholars have moved away from Billy Sunday and in the direction of French poststructuralism: they cast their lot with those who question any truths rather than those who insist on the literal truth of God’s word.”3 This observation was truly prophetic!  Today, evangelicalism in the name of “emergence,” has distanced itself so far from its fundamental roots that it is embracing postmodernism rather than standing firm in conservative, historic Christianity.

Brian McLaren, probably the most prolific emerging church writer, flatly promotes leaving the old structures and passionately embracing the postmodern culture.  “Even an agnostic or an atheist, then, can see the need for new kinds of churches in the new world—churches that once again replenish the spiritually hungry and thirsty, that understand them and connect them with the mysteries they seed; churches that promote a healthful, whole, hearty spirituality rather than an ugly, thin, hateful, insipid, or anemic religion.”4 Typically, these emergent writers have little sympathy or courtesy for conservative Christianity.

A Definition

Dan Kimball in his book, Emerging Worship:  Creating Worship Gatherings for New Generations,5 gives a revealing definition of “emerging” church worship.  In the first chapter of his book, he takes the reader back to Genesis 4 with the worship of Cain and Abel.  He then moves to Noah in Genesis 8, then to Abraham in Genesis 13, then to Jacob, then David and all the way to Malachi.  Here he stops to show that we have “read about how worship emerged not just in the Temple in Jerusalem, but everywhere, with incense and pure offerings brought to God.  The paradigm of worship shifts again” (p. 8).  The next paragraph begins, “The New Testament is full of emerging worship” (p. 8).

Here, I thought Kimball was about to stop and make a case for why he thinks emerging worship is the true New Testament style of worship.  But no!  With only a brief mention of Jesus and the Apostles, he was on to the architecture of the Roman Basilica of the first few centuries, then the liturgy of the Catholic Church, past the Reformation to today.  His fantastic conclusion is, “So, as our current culture moves from a modern to postmodern world, it is only natural that new forms of worship are arising. . . . It doesn’t mean previous forms of worship are invalid; just that new expressions are emerging—and will continue to emerge” (p. 9).  In other words, even the New Testament was a passing (“emerging”) expression of the necessary ongoing change in worship style, or at best, one of many traditions from which to draw the pieces that we like in our own worship.

If that sounds too fantastic, listen to McLaren:

The new church does not view the New Testament as a “New Leviticus”—a law book of strict rules—nor as a fixed, detailed blueprint to be applied to all churches in all cultures across time.  Rather, the New Testament serves as (among other things) an inspired, exemplary, and eternally relevant case study of how the early church itself adapted and evolved and coped with rapid change and new challenges.  In place of a fixed structure that is to fit all, the new church advocates a flexible, adaptable, evolving structure that is developed to meet the current needs.  The key word is adaptability.6

In a similar vein, Leonard Sweet says, “Jesus is the Truth.  Truth resides in relationships, not documents or principles.  The Gospels don’t teach us about Jesus as principle but Jesus as person.  The power of a logo is that it transmutes image into identity, creating the very thing it symbolizes.  In Jesus, the logos and logo became one.  Not until the fourteenth century (at the earliest) did truth become embedded in propositions and positions.”7 The emerging church leaders see the New Testament as only descriptive of what the church did at that time, not prescriptive for what we must do today.

Correct Observations

There are a few things that the emerging church proponents have correctly noticed.  First, this is a postmodern generation.  Few would disagree that this change from modern to postmodern times has taken place.  The question is not whether we have seen this cultural change happen but how should we respond biblically?  Second, Modernism was a faulty system of anti-theistic thought.  Yes, of course it was.  But the emerging church is claiming that even the form of our traditional church service came more from modernism than from the New Testament.  This is the pot calling the kettle black! Third, the Seeker-Sensitive movement of the past generation has gone beyond any reasonable similarity to a New Testament form of church.  Still, however, the emerging church speakers are much kinder to them than to conservatives.  Fourth, this is a difficult time for conservative, traditional churches.  I would say that the younger generation is not coming to the traditional church because it has never been taught nor disciplined to do so.  Most of these parents have not forced their children to do anything they didn’t want to do.

Though I agree with these four assessments of today’s culture, I also believe the emerging church followers are responding to every one of them in the wrong way.  They are becoming more postmodern rather than confronting that culture; they are flatly wrong that the traditional church was patterned from the modernism of the last 200 years; they helped breed the Seeker-Sensitive movement themselves until they got tired of it; and though it is a hard time for traditional churches to attract young people, such a fact does not and never has kept a true church from remaining true to its biblical convictions.

Greatest Concerns

The first concern I have when I read emerging church writers, and especially when they describe those who only attend those kinds of services, is that this is a group of people which has never liked the church.  Loving the brethren and “the brotherhood” is more than just having sympathy for a wayward believer, much more.  It is loving the people of God!  It is loving what they believe, how they live, and how they worship.  Christian history is replete with testimonies of sinners who have been converted and rescued from their old ways.  Kimball calls his emerging church “refuge camps for bitter Christians that complain against the organized church” (205).  He says that “churchy styling” is “exactly what English emerging churches are trying to escape from” (216).  He also says about English emerging churches, “So, when post-Christian generations in England and Europe who grew up outside the church are resonating with worship there, we in America should pay attention” (209).  My point is that a postmodern generation has boycotted and won!  They weren’t about to participate in what the church is, only in what they want it to be.

My second concern is from Kimball’s definition (see previous) of the emerging church.  Through his book he refers to the old style as a “Judeo-Christian” style of church.  Of a California church he says they “wanted to develop a ministry geared to post-Christians growing up without a Judeo-Christian mindset” (157).  Later in the book he says, “Both British and American post-Christians share in common a culturally implanted worldview that differs from the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview” (217).  In other words, our “Judeo-Christian” worldview is (was) simply a cultural expression.  It can be replaced overnight by any group of people with a different cultural point of view.  Where is the commitment to doctrine here?  Where is the belief in a prophetic future or even the proper understanding of the church age?

My third concern is about the emerging worship itself.  It is so loaded with symbolisms that appeal to the five senses that it becomes void of faithful substance and cognitive processes.  They use crosses, candles, draperies, prayer stations, stations of the cross, nature scenes, painting stations, images of space and planets, and almost anything else that one can dream up.  Their gathering rooms may be full of couches or other casual seating arranged in random order; attendees move about throughout the service; various hands-on experiments may be tried at any time; and many more such things can be listed.  Does all of this appeal to the walk of faith or to the natural man’s limited world of the flesh?  Benjamin Woolley admitted, “Artificial reality is the authentic postmodern condition, and virtual reality its definitive technological expression . . . The artificial is the authentic.”8 As to its evangelistic effectiveness, the discussion of pragmatic methodology has been covered again and again.

My fourth concern is that preaching and everything that goes with it is dangerously minimized or eliminated.  Kimball says, “Emerging preachers see themselves as fellow journeyers.  Preaching is no longer an authoritative transferring of biblical information.  Instead, it’s becoming more about spiritual formation and Kingdom living” (87).  Preachers, pulpits, platforms, and various things that churches have used effectively for hundreds and even thousands of years are now seen as showy, power-hungry, and condescending.  Almost anything connected with preaching is claimed to come from Greek culture and not from the New Testament.  It’s always amazing that this generation has such ability to correct 2000 years of church history!

The claim is that we have fallen prey to the “modernism” of the last 200 years and that what we have called “fundamental” is really an expression of the “modern” era.  Preaching too, they say, is borrowed from that “culture.”  Besides being historically naïve, this is self-contradictory.  By the same reasoning the emerging church, being so enmeshed in the postmodern era, would have no ability to see its own error much less someone else’s.  The truth is, these gatherings are filled with those who never liked church and could never bear to listen to gospel preaching.  Therefore, preaching has been eliminated.

And So . . .

D.A. Carson aptly asked the question, “Is there at least some danger that what is being advocated is not so much a new kind of Christian in a new emerging church, but a church that is so submerging itself in the culture that it risks hopeless compromise?”9 The answer is becoming more obvious all the time.

Notes:
1. James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy (Minneapolis:  Bethany House, 1996) 9.
2. Dan Story, Engaging The Closed Minded (Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 1999) 9.
3. Alan Wolfe, “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” The Atlantic Monthly, October, 2000.
4. Brian McLaren, The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2000) 14.
5. Dan Kimball, Emerging Worship (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2004) title page.
6. McLaren, p. 23.
7. Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims (Nashville:  Broadman & Holman Pub., 2000) 131.
8. Quoted by Douglas Groothuis, The Soul in CyberSpace (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 1997) 27.
9. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) 44.

 

Click here for more “Senior Saints & Sensibility” articles.
Articles
Leave a Comment
Read More