The Church
by Dr. Jack Hyles
Electronic Printing, 2000 by FFEP
Part Two of Two
Chapter Fourteen
The Price for the
Church
And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the
elders of the church. And when they were come to him, he said unto them, Ye
know, from the first day that I came intoAsia, after what manner Ihave been
with you at all seasons, Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and
with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of
the Jews: And howl kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have
shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house. Acts
20:17-20
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the
counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock,
over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of
God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Acts 20:27, 28
The word purchased means the right
price applied to the right place.
If I wrote a check to pay for a debt, but failed to
send that check in to the whom I owed, would my debt be paid? No, I still
owe the debt. A debt must not only be the proper price, it must also be paid
to the proper place. The price for the church is God's blood, but the blood
must be paid to the proper place. Let me show you what the proper place is.
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by
his own blood he entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. Hebrews 9:12
In the Old Testament, the High Priest killed two goats
on the Day of Atonement. The blood of one goat was taken by the High Priest
into the Holy Place to the Ark of the Covenant. On the top of the Ark of the
Covenant was the Mercy Seat. Over that Mercy Seat were two cherubims beaten
out of pure gold. Between the wings of those cherubims was the Glory of God.
The blood from the goat that was sacrificed was applied to the proper place
which was the Mercy Seat. If the blood did not get to the Mercy Seat, then
it was the proper price, but not paid to the proper place. It would have
been no more valid than that check written but not paid to the creditor.
If the blood of Jesus was left on the ground at the
cross, that means it did not get to the Holy Place and is not valid. "What
can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." It is not just the
blood shed, but also the blood applied.
God told Moses to instruct the people to apply the
blood of the lamb at the Passover. When He passed over and saw the
blood of that lamb, He would withhold His judgment. God did not judge them
based on His omniscience. He made a point of letting them know that He would
not judge them only when He saw the blood. It was not enough that the
blood was shed. The blood had to be properly applied.
How could God see the blood in the tabernacle? His
glory was in the Holy Place, and the blood had to be taken inside the Holy
Place and sprinkled on that Mercy Seat. That was the right place
to take the right price. If the right price was paid on the altar in
the courtyard, but left there, it would have been the right price,
but the wrong place. If the blood Jesus shed on Calvary was not
applied in Heaven, it was the right price in the wrong place
and it cannot save anybody.
Jesus did more than just shed His blood for the
church. He purchased the church with his own blood. To purchase it, He had
to take the right price to the right place.
And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and
to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Hebrews 12:24
It does not say that it is the shedding of blood that
saves. It is the shed blood sprinkled that saves. When Cain had
killed Abel God said:
What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's
blood crieth unto me from the ground. Genesis 4:10
God can hear blood speak. The voice of Abel's blood
cried to God from the ground. Blood can speak a language God can hear.
Thirty years after the blood had been shed, it
still speaketh. Two thousand years after Calvary it still speaketh.
From where does it speak? It has to speak to God, so there is a heavenly
Mercy Seat just as there was an earthly Mercy Seat; Jesus, the High Priest,
took His own blood to that heavenly Mercy Seat, otherwise it would not have
been acceptable. It would have been the right price, but the wrong
place. The blood had to get from the altar to the Mercy Seat.
The blood of Jesus had to be shed; otherwise He could
have died without the inflicting of the wounds. Jesus went up to Heaven and
sprinkled His own blood on the Mercy Seat. Right now that blood is talking.
It is saying not to charge our sins to us because we have been purchased by
that blood.
Cain's blood indicted him for killing his brother
Abel. God's blood speaketh better things than that ofAbel. God looks
down, sees my sins, and starts to charge them against my record, but the
blood starts talking. The blood says, "I have already paid for that sin."
The Bible says that God will not impute or write down my sin against me
because the blood is speaking. The blood is my canceled check, and that
check speaks that the debt has been paid. There is nothing God the Father
can do about my sins because Jesus has the canceled check there on the Mercy
Seat. That is the price He paid for the church.
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ.... I Peter 1:2
This does not refer to the elect according to the
shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, but to the sprinkling of that blood
applied to the proper place. Jesus did die and pay the price, but
paying the price and getting the price to the right place are two entirely
different things. If on the Passover, the blood of that innocent lamb was
left in the back yard where the lamb was killed and not properly applied,
the firstborn of the family would have been killed. It was not the blood
shed back in the back yard that spared the life of that firstborn; it was
that blood applied at the front door. It was not the blood shed on the altar
that satisfied God; it was the blood applied in the Holy of Holies. It was
not the blood shed on the cross that saves; it was that blood applied in
Heaven.
When Jesus was resurrected, and Mary Magdalene saw
him, Jesus said, Touch me Not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.
He was the High Priest. He was taking the blood He had shed as the Lamb
of God to the Mercy Seat in Heaven, to sprinkle it there. Between the time
the High Priest took the blood in the basin and sprinkled it on the Mercy
Seat, nobody could touch Him. That is why He told Mary Magdalene not to
touch Him.
Later He told Thomas to put his hands into His side.
Why could Thomas touch Him when Mary Magdalene could not? Because when
Thomas saw Him, He had already been to Heaven, sprinkled the blood, and the
blood was already talking to the Father.
Jesus died for the church and purchased it with His
own blood. The local church is composed of born-again people, who have been
scripturally baptized, and have joined a certain assembly.
The Jews were going to the promised land. When they
got there, they were going to build a permanent temple. On the way, all they
had was a tabernacle, a tent. It was a portable place of worship. Jesus has
bought us a home in Heaven, but we are not there yet. So He has also bought
us a portable Heaven, which is called the church. He bought me a home in
Heaven with his blood, and He bought me a home on earth while I am going to
Heaven. He purchased it with the most precious and expensive thing, God's
own blood. He not only bought my soul, my spirit, my body, a home in Heaven,
but He also purchased the church with His own blood.
Chapter Fifteen
The Five Churches
When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had
heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (Though Jesus
himself baptized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea ,and departed again
into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city
of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob
gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being
wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth
hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her,
Give me to drink
The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to
draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living
water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and
drank thereof himself and his children, and his cattle? John 4:1-7, 11,
12
It is amazing that even after seventeen hundred years
Jacob's well was still giving water. Occasionally, somewhere out in the
woods, somebody will discover an old well which is over a hundred years old,
but it is no longer giving any water. This lady in Sychar came to Jacob's
well, and it was still giving water to drink after seventeen hundred years.
In verse twelve she says, ..
Art thou greater than our father, Jacob, which gave us the well...? That
statement leads me to believe that when Jacob dug that well he had in mind
more than just the people who were alive at that time. Seventeen hundred
years later there was still water being drawn from that well. For fifty-one
generations that well kept on giving water.
When I was a young man there was a famous
fundamental preacher in America who had the largest Sunday school in the
United States. He was probably the most famous fundamental
independent preacher of his day, and maybe in the history of our nation.
When he passed away, his church made the mistake of not calling the right
person to pastor. The church went from over 3,000 in Sunday school to about
200. Finally, the church sold its buildings and the few remaining people
scattered to other churches. That church is now only history. It was at one
time the outstanding soul-winning church of this generation.
There was another church that at one time had the
largest Sunday school in America. The pastor died suddenly of a heart
attack. The church was not prepared. They did not know the correct way to
find a pastor. They once had about 6,000 in Sunday school, but now they have
only about 1200 who still attend.
Not too many years ago, the pastor of what was at that
time the largest in America resigned. Seven wealthy men took charge of the
church and decided that they did not want the same type of pastor as before.
They wanted more of a Bible student and less of a hell-fire and brimstone
preacher. Those seven wealthy men controlled that church until it was only a
shadow of what it once had been.
I have a desire for the First Baptist Church of
Hammond to be the same one hundred years from now as it is today. If God
will give me grace, I am going to see to it that it is prepared, not only
for my death, but for the death of the good people who are there now.
For many years the First Baptist Church has been a
well flowing to an entire nation. With all my heart I have tried to do more
than just to have a wonderful ministry while I am alive. I have tried to see
to it that the well would continue to run long after I am gone. I realize
that if First Baptist Church were to die its work would never stop. Hundreds
and thousands of preacher boys, missionaries, and converts all over the
world are spreading the Gospel of Christ and building great churches, but, I
want it to still be doing the same thing a hundred years from now as it is
doing now.
Most of the great churches of the last generation are
no longer useful to God. Most of them are liberal in their theology and are
not busy reaching the lost world as they once did. I am convinced that the
reason for this is that the pastor who built it to its greatest days failed
to prepare the people for the next generation.
Abraham was a well-digger. There are three main wells
that Abraham dug.
1. The well of Rehoboth, meaning
fruitfulness or enlarging.
2.. The well of Beer-lahairoi, meaning the
power and vision of God.
3. The well of Beer-sheba, meaning the Word
of God.
The Philistines came and stopped up those wells. The
Philistines of our day will do everything they can to see to it that the
church does not continue to be useful.
Isaac came along and redug those three wells that had
been stopped up by the Philistines. It would certainly be a wonderful thing
if the Paul Rader Tabernacle in Chicago could once again be what it used to
be for God. It would be a wonderful thing if Moody Church in Chicago started
running buses all over Chicago and bringing poor people to church. It would
be a wonderful thing if Spurgeon's Tabernacle could once again flow with
living water. But rather than unstopping the wells that have been stopped
up, would it not be even better if we kept the Philistines from stopping up
the wells we have flowing now?
There are five different types of churches that a
church can become.
1. The New Testament church.
This is our aim. Tragically, many great New Testament churches do not
remain as such and eventually deteriorate to being like one of these
remaining four.
2. The state church.
So he carried me away in the spirit into the
wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of
names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. Revelation 17:3
And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou
marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that
carrieth her. Revelation 17:7
And the woman which thou sawest is that great city,
which reigneth over the kings of the earth. Revelation 17:18
In these three verses we find something in common.
Each tells us that in the end time, there is going to be a state church and
a church state. The harlot, (the National and World Council of Churches) is
going to yoke up with the United Nations. That union of nations and union of
churches will unite and become a state church.
There is more to it than just the separation of church
and state. There are two kingdoms involved. There is the kingdom of Heaven
and the kingdoms of this world. The kingdoms of this world have no business
operating the kingdom of God. It is more than the church not
interfering with the state. It is also the state not interfering with the
church.
All across America, the voices that once warned us of
state accreditation for our schools are passing off the scene. There are
very few men with a national voice today who have the courage to say
anything about it anymore. We must not allow our schools to succumb to
accreditation. God does not need the devil's approval to run His business.
Superiority does not need the approval of inferiority.
Several years ago, the state of Indiana wrote to
inform us that the laws of our state require that every college be
accredited by either an accrediting association or the State Board of
Education. We threw it away, so they sent us a second letter. We threw it
away as well. Every drop of blood in my body will spill out before I will
allow the state to tell Hyles-Anderson College how to operate.
There was a day we had many voices around the country
telling us not to be accredited. There was a day when fundamental
colleges told the state that they will not tell us how to operate. It is not
the state's business what we teach in our college. It is not the state's
business who teaches in our college. There is not one place in the Bible
that gives the government the right to run the church. There are two
different kingdoms, and neither has the right to run the other.
The next thing they try to get us to do is to appoint
our own accrediting board. They will allow that board instead to be the
policing force for our schools, so we begin to police each other. It is
nobody's business what goes on in the church. There are two things wrong
which must be said about that.
(1) The local church is the final
authority about what goes on in the local church.
(2) It takes away our freedom. I do
not want to
lose my freedom to a liberal or
a fundamentalist.
We form a system and as it deteriorates, we choose
other men to replace the men now on the board of the accrediting
association. Some of the greatest colleges of a generation ago have gone
liberal because they allowed someone else to have control. Many parents want
their child's education to be accredited. Why would any Christian parent
want the school that teaches their child to be accredited by unsaved people,
who are for abortion, for the gay rights ordinances, and for handing out
birth control to kids in the schools? The state wants to be your god. We
must warn the people in our churches of the danger, so that the next
generation will know to stand against allowing it to happen to them. We must
protect the well from being shut down when we are gone.
3. The denominational church.
We need independent churches to be able to fellowship and to cooperate
with each other without becoming denominations, which will eventually seek
to have control over each other. There is a new movement in America of
independent, soul-winning, sin hating and Christ-honoring churches. It would
be destructive if we decided to go out and start a new denomination. A
church should stand with everybody who stands for right, and against
everybody who stands for wrong, but it should not take the church into
anything. Keep it independent.
I have many dear preacher friends across the country
who are like-minded in their beliefs. I want us to be able to enjoy our
fellowship without the constraints of becoming denominational. We do not try
to meddle with their affairs. We do not try to tell them what to do. We do
not send them their Sunday school literature, and if they do not take our
literature, we do not black-list them. There is a pure, sweet, cooperative
fellowship without any union, or without any organization.
That is the way the church should be and it is the way
to keep it alive for many more years. We have the idea there is strength in
a movement. There is not strength in a movement, and there is not strength
in union. There is strength in unity, volunteer unity.
4. The invisible, universal church.
In an earlier chapter I mentioned the three groups in
fundamentalism. I love group number one. I have preached in their
churches throughout the years, but do not call one of them to be the pastor
of a church in group number three.
I love group number two, but we should not call a
group number two preacher to pastor a group three church.
One of the greatest preachers who ever lived in this
nation resigned his church a few years ago. His church called a good man,
but one who was a member of group number one. They called a formal pastor to
pastor an informal church. They called a non-aggressive pastor to pastor an
aggressive church. They called a so-called deeper-life pastor to pastor a
hell-fire and brimstone church. His philosophy did not fit in group number
three. That is what damages many of the once great churches and destroys
their greatness.
When I went to First Baptist Church of Hammond, the
pastor of a large, famous Chicago church called and asked me to meet him for
lunch. We had lunch together one day, and he said, "Dr. Hyles, I want to
have in Chicago what you have in Hammond. Tell me how I can do it."
I said, "Change your Sunday morning music. Fire your
committees. Have a representative church government. Take the people who are
on the committees and send them out on bus routes."
He did not want to hear those things. What he was
really asking me was how to do what we were doing without doing what we were
doing. You cannot do it. When D.L. Moody was in Chicago, that is not what he
did. He had wagons and horses all over the Chicago area that were used in
reaching people for Christ.
Do not allow the universal, invisible church people to
take over the church. One of our young men attended a group number one
college. He was a fine young man from one of our finest church families. I
was talking to him one day about school, and I asked him where he was going
to church.
He said, "I go to the college church."
I said "Do you have people saved there?"
He said, "I don't know."
I said, "Why do you not know?"
He said, "Whenever somebody comes forward, they always
take them into another room to deal with them. We never hear if they were
saved."
They are not the same as we are. When a sinner is
saved, I want to rejoice for a while. They are good men, but they will not
mix well in a church like First Baptist.
I do not believe a new convert should go before a
church committee to allow them to decide whether or not he can be baptized.
That is what they did when I first went to Hammond. Once a month they had a
meeting with the new converts. One Sunday night we had a meeting ninety-one
converts were there! They could not all get in the room. They were lined up
down the hallway. The chairman of the 'judgment" committee walked over and
said, "What are we going to do?"
I said, "Let's get some bigger nets, and we will get
more fish." If we allow group number one and two to take over the churches,
they will take away the soul-winning emphasis. They will become dominated by
committees that snuff the life out of the church.
5. The synagogue church.
I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty,
(but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are
Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Revelation 2:9
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan,
which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them
to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
Revelation 3:9
A church is not just an assembly. It is a
called-out assembly. Called out of what? Called out of the world. If a
church is a worldly church, it is a synagogue rather than an ekklesia. A
worldly church is not a church. It may be called a church, but it is not a
church. They say they are, but they are not. A called-out assembly dresses
differently, lives differently, and sings differently. We do not walk the
same beat the world walks.
The most dangerous thing churches face is taking a
stand only against those sins which are specifically listed in the Bible. I
am against sin if the Bible says it is wrong, but the Bible not only lists
sins; it also lists principals by which we are to judge what else is wrong.
That is not legalism. It is applying Biblical principles to the way we live,
and thus avoiding becoming like the world. A church must be careful not to
fall for a fancy Bible study that teaches the Bible without emphasizing the
importance of specific applications in the way we are to live.
These are the types of churches that cause great,
independent, fundamental, soul-winning churches to lose their greatness and
fall from having the influence they once had for the Lord. A church will
continue to be like Jacob's well, with living water flowing through it
generation after generation, only as long as it avoids becoming like these
churches.
We must stay clear of the state.
We must stay clear of denominationalism.
We must stay clear of the invisible, universal church
crowd.
We must stay clear of just becoming a synagogue, by
losing our convictions and standards.
I love the children in my church. For many of them I
am the only pastor they have ever had. Someday, I will be gone, and they
will be forced, for the first time in their lives, to find a new pastor. I
want them to know what to look for and what to avoid. I want there to be the
same kind of church for their children as there was for them. The next
generation needs for those of us who believe in the New Testament church to
prepare for those who will come after us. We must train others to keep the
life in the church, so that the water will still be flowing long after we
are gone.
Many great churches have lost their greatness after
the first or second generation. It does not have to be that way. A hundred
years from now, I hope that the well at First Baptist Church is still
flowing.
Jacob did not dig that well just for his own family.
When Jacob was digging that well, he probably said, "I am going to make it
good. I am going to be sure that my children and my grandchildren can drink
from this well." No wonder the woman at Sychar could say, "Jacob dug this
well for us. "
I hope two hundred years from now some young person
can come to First Baptist Church and find an old-fashioned fundamental
church. I hope he will be able to say, "Many years ago a man named Jack
Hyles dug this well for us."
Chapter Sixteen
The World and the
Church
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to
heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son
also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he
should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work
which thou gayest me to do. And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine
own self with the glory which had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gayest me out of the world:
thine they were, and thou gayest them me; and they have kept thy word.
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for
them which thou has given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine,
and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the
world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee.
And now come Ito thee; and these things I speak in
the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given
them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the
world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take
them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They
are not of the world, even as lam not of the world. Sanctify them through
thy truth: thy word is truth.
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me. John 17:1-6, 9-11a 13-17,21
In this passage, over half of the verses deal with the
world. The word world is the word kosmos in the Greek
and it means the world arrangement. No chapter in all the Bible
mentions the church as often as it is mentioned here, yet the word church
is not actually used at all.
The subject of the church, however, is brought up over
and over again. Let me begin by explaining the purpose of the church. Jesus
said to the Father, that the world may believe. There we find the
purpose of the church. The church exists that the world may believe. It is
not talking about the whole earth. There are several words for world
in the Greek. There is the word world which means dirt
or soil. There is the word world which means nations.
Here in John the word kosmos is used meaning the world
arrangement. or the world system.
It is not referring to the anti-Christ and the
end-time world government. It is not just referring to Hollywood, Broadway,
night clubs, and other worldly things. It is referring to the entire world
arrangement, most of which is not bad in and of itself. Jesus described it
well when he said, eating and drinking, buying and selling, and marrying
and giving in marriage. There is nothing wrong with these things. They
are simply a part of the world system.
When Jesus said not to love the world, nor the things
in the world, He was referring to these types of things in the world's
system. He was saying, "love not eating and drinking, love not buying and
selling, and love not marrying and giving in marriage." Because of our
misunderstanding on this, we totally misunderstand what worldliness is all
about. We also misunderstand the role of the church in the world and in our
own lives.
There are two kingdoms in this world: the kosmos and
God's Kingdom. Everything in this world is a part of the kosmos except the
church. Your house is in the kosmos. The activities of your daily
life are in the kosmos. When God calls us out of this world there is
no other place to go except the church. The church is the only place where
we are strictly absorbed in the things of God and not the things of the
kosmos. Either you are in the church or you are in the kosmos.
In this chapter we are going to learn that God calls
us out of the world and then turns around and commands us to go back into
the world. Let's look further into this.
He says, "I want you to come out of the
world, to go back into the world. I want you not to love the world, not to
be of the world, and then to go back into the world." God is saying that
there are two places we can be. One of those is the kosmos, or the
world arrangement. That includes buying gasoline, driving a car, shoveling
snow, cleaning house, cooking meals, washing clothes, or going to work.
All of that is kosmos, because it is a part of
the world arrangement. None of it is bad.
The only place not in the kosmos is in the New
Testament church. When God calls us out of the world, he is calling us into
the church. Most Christians do not even begin to understand the importance
of the church. You are not going to grow in grace outside the church. You
are not going to be a better Christian outside the church, because you
cannot be a better Christian than the kosmos.
Let me make something very clear. All of the
inter-denominational teaching is kosmos. The church is God's kingdom
in this world, not in the sense of the Kingdom of God, but as God's empire.
When you come out of the kosmos you go into the church.
Occasionally somebody will say to me, "I have been
staying at home and growing in grace just studying the Bible there."
The home is a wonderful place, but it will not take
the place of the church anymore than the church can take the place of the
home. God would not have established the church if the home could have
done the same job. God would not have established the home if the church
could have done the same job. The home and the church both have a
place in the training of children, but the church is the place you go to
when you come out of the kosmos.
Jesus then says that the we should go back into the
kosmos. Why?
That the world may believe, and That the
world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast
loved me. The purpose of the church is that the world may know and
believe.
We must come out of the world to get strength; to go
back into the world, that the world may believe; to come back out of the
world to get strength; to go back into the world, that the world may
believe; to come back out of the world to get strength; to go back into the
world, that the world may believe. God is not calling us out of this world
permanently, and God is not calling us to go into this world permanently. He
is calling us alternately to go into the world to help the world believe,
and then to come back out of the world to get strength to go back into the
world again.
It is to be to church, to world, to church, to world,
to church, to world, to church, to world. There is no intermediate zone.
There is no space in between. The only place that is not kosmos is
the New Testament church. The world is everything but the church. If you are
not in church, you are in the world, because there are only two kingdoms. If
we do not go to church, we are worldly, because the only place that is not
worldly is the church.
And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own
self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gayest me out of the world.
John 17:5, 6a
He is not just referring to the glory he had before
there was an earth. The word world again is the word kosmos.
Jesus was referring to a time before man fell in the Garden of Eden, or
before the world was arranged like it is now. Man did not work by the sweat
of his brow. Woman did not give birth by travail. The earth had no howling
winds, no fiery serpents and no wild animals, and the arrangement was not
like it is now.
Jesus said, I have manifested thy name unto the men
which thou gayest me out of the world. The moment you come to Christ you
are commanded to get out of the world. The only way to get out of the world
is to get into the church. Christians are to be in church every Sunday
morning, every Sunday night, and every Wednesday night. We can remove all of
the sinful activities out of our lives, but still be worldly, because we are
not coming out of the world by coming into the church. The church is God's
institution. It is either the world or the church. Many Christians do not
love sin, but they do love the world because they do not faithfully come out
of the world
That is why people should go to church. That is why
people should join the church. That is why people should get baptized. You
come out of the world long enough to get strength to go back into the world.
We get strength to go to the steel mills and live right while we are there.
We get strength not go to the Christmas parties where they serve the liquor.
We get strength to go back out in the world and not listen to the rock
music. We get strength to go out into the world to tell people about the
Saviour. A Christian will stop being a soul winner if he stops coming to
church. It is at church that we get into the habit of talking about Jesus,
so that we can go back into the world and talk about Him to the lost people
around us. We sing about Jesus, preach about Jesus, teach about Jesus, and
fellowship around Jesus until it is not so hard to go out in the world and
talk about Him. Stay out of church for a while, and you will not talk about
Jesus in the world. You will begin to get more and more ashamed. That is
what church is all about.
The church is not a place where a bunch of people
tiptoe in on Sunday morning, with a dignified looking wardrobe, look at
three candles burning on the communion table, listen to a choir sing the
"Sevenfold Amens," and have a worship experience. That is not the purpose of
the church. The church is a place where you can come to hear His name
praised, after hearing His name cursed all week, so that you can go back out
there and praise His name in the world. The church is the place you come to
fellowship with God's people, so that you can have strength enough to go
back out and talk about Jesus to the devil's crowd in the kosmos.
Every time you stand up and sing, "Blessed assurance,
Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine," you are building
up a little more strength so you can go back into the kosmos.
Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou
hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou
gayest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came
out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. John
17:7, 8
I wonder where Jesus gave them these words. They had
to have assembled in church. Hebrews says that Jesus prayed and sang praises
in the church. Where did Jesus talk about this and teach the Word of God? In
church. All the cottage prayer meetings in the world will never take the
place of church.
A pastor friend of mine went to an
inter-denominational seminary to take a course. There he met some
theologians who taught him the idea of having little cell groups. He had
built his church with Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night
services, but he decided to try dividing his church into these cell groups.
As a result, the church body no longer came together, and the church began
to go down. No home Bible study will ever take the place of the church. No
cottage prayer meeting will take the place of the church, because the church
is supposed to assemble.
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for
them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine,
and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the
world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep
through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one,
as we are. John 17:9-11
Jesus was praying for the church, because He knows
that if the church will pray, the kosmos will get the message. The
average Christian thinks that coming out of the world is when we stop doing
sinful things. Coming out of the world is coming to church. It is coming out
of the kosmos. A Christian college is not a substitute for the
church. We take the church so lightly. That is why you should not travel
during church time. That is why Christian school teachers ought to be
faithful to all of the church services just like everybody else.
And now I come to thee; and these things I speak in
the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given
them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the
world, even as lam not of the world. John 17:13, 14
They are in the world, but not of the world. They are
in the kosmos, but not of the kosmos. On an airplane flight
one day they offered me a glass of wine. I did not drink the wine, so I was
in the airplane, but not of the airplane. I was in the kosmos but I
was not of the kosmos.
When you go to work, you are to be in the kosmos
but not of the kosmos. When you go shopping, you are supposed to
be in the kosmos, but not of the kosmos. That is what Jesus
meant when He said, And be not conformed to this world: but ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind. While you are there in the
world, you are not supposed to be of it. You are to be transfigured from it.
We are to witness to the world while we are in the
world, but we do not need to be like the world in order to witness to the
world. In fact, we are commanded not to be like them. The greatest testimony
to the world is the testimony of a Christian who has the strength and the
courage to be different for the sake of his Saviour. That strength comes
from the church. Far too many Christians use the excuse for being like the
world as being their method of reaching the world. That is contrary to what
we are commanded.
Jesus also said that we would be hated by the world.
The most hated church in Hammond, Indiana, is the First Baptist Church.
Isn't that strange? The church that the public schools curse the most has
the most public school students going there. There are more public school
students in First Baptist Church of Hammond than in any liberal church in
this city. Why? The kosmos knows they do not have the answer. They
will not listen to someone who is of them, but they will listen to somebody
that is not of them. That is how we reach of many of the young people in the
public schools. They are looking for answers.
I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the
world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. John 17:15
That is a strange statement. He just finished praying
that we would be taken out of the world, yet then He prays that we will not
be taken out of the world. We are to come out of the world, but not stay out
of the world. Why? To keep us from the evil that is in the world. He was
praying that while we are in the world we would be kept from the evil that
is in the world. The church is the place we go that is not in the world to
get the strength to keep us from that evil which is in the world. God's
people will not be kept from the evil of this world, if they do not
frequently come out of the world to get that strength.
They are not of the world, even as lam not of the
world. John 17:16
Jesus does not want us to be of the world any more
than He would be of the world. That is why we should not watch soap operas
on television. Would Jesus watch the soap operas? Then we are not to to
watch them either. We are to be in this world exactly like Jesus was. Jesus
went to church to get strength, so we are to got to church to get strength.
He walked among men, but He was not of men.
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
John 17:17
The word sanctify means to set them apart.
When we leave the church and go into the kosmos, we are to be set
apart from the kosmos. How can we be set apart from the kosmos?
Through God's Word. We are sanctified through the Word.
I was on an airplane one day flying to Los Angeles. I
had a Bible out and was reading it. A former famous football player came
walking down the aisle in the airplane. At that time, he was a wicked
football player and Hollywood movie star. He walked back to the washroom and
he saw my Bible open. He stopped and stared at it. He turned around and
backed up. He had a group of friends with him, so he motioned for them to
come back there. He pointed to my Bible. About a dozen of those guys stared
at me and my Bible. I looked up at them and said, "JESUS!" He went to the
wash room, and the others went back to their seats.
If we read the Word of God, quote the Word of God,
carry the Word of God, study the Word of God, and memorize the Word of God,
we will be sanctified, or set apart from the world. The world will also help
you set yourself aside. We leave the kosmos to go to church, go back
to the kosmos and stay in the Word of God, and the Word of God
sanctifies us. We are not of the world because we are of the Word of God
while we are in the kosmos.
As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have 1
also sent them into the world. John 17:18
Why did Jesus come to the world? For the Son of man
is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Christ Jesus came into
the world (kosmos) to save sinners. Then why are we in the kosmos?
To save sinners. Jesus told the Father that we were sent to do the same
thing that He was sent to do.
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in
me, and! in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may
believe that thou hast sent me. John 17:21
In the final analysis, we go to church that the world
may believe.
Unfortunately, so many Christians have been saturated
by the inter-denominational teaching that they have no comprehension of the
truth concerning the church. Jesus never even considered a Christian not
being in church. He purchased the local church with His own blood. The
church was built for Christians to come to as soon as they got saved.
And we know that all things work together for good
to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
If Jesus is calling us to something, then He also is
calling us from something. He is calling us from the world, to the church. I
believe that He is telling us we ought to go to church because it will make
everything work out fine. But, everything will not work out for the good, if
we do not go to church. That may seem strange to many fundamental
Christians because we have been so indoctrinated by the Scofield Bible and
the inter-denominational Bible schools and institutes who have little
understanding regarding the local church. Jesus never intended for any
Christian to be outside the local church.
The only thing not in the world is the church.
Anything outside that church is kosmos. You can go anywhere from good
kosmos to bad kosmos. Jesus is calling us from the world to
the church.
It is difficult for a Christian who is oriented in any
other doctrine than this to get into his subconscious the importance of the
church. We have sent our preacher boys to inter-denominational Bible
colleges and seminaries that did not teach the autonomy and independence of
the local church and they have been brainwashed with the universal invisible
church concept, so the local church is not really important to them anymore.
It is tragic how many Christians have been affected by this doctrine.
If you do not faithfully attend church, you will go
back into the world and eventually you will be of the world. Many Christians
go on vacation and think it is fine to miss church on a Wednesday night, or
maybe even on Sunday. Or, they stop at something that calls itself church,
but it is not a church. Many born-again people have played the slot machines
in Las Vegas, Nevada, on a vacation, who would never have done so if they
had not missed church. That is why people go on a vacation, and end up going
mixed swimming. If you stay in the kosmos too long without coming out
of the kosmos, which is the church, before you know it, you are in
the world and you are of the world.
Chapter Seventeen
Jesus and the Church
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of
man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias;
and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom
say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art
thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,
but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell
shall riot prevail against it. Matthew 16:13-18
It is amazing how we accept things as true just
because we have always heard them taught a certain way. For example, most
people have always heard that the church is the body of Christ. We have been
taught that Christ is the head of all Christians and that all Christians
form His body. The Bible does not mean it in that way. Much of this has come
from the Scofield Bible. It is not true, and I am going to show you that in
this chapter. If you believe the Bible, you will understand exactly what the
church is all about.
1. Jesus is the founder of the
church. The church was not founded on Pentecost. The Bible says
in Acts 2 that they added to the church those that were saved. You
cannot add to something that is not there. I do not know how long the church
was there, but it was there before Matthew 18, where it speaks of taking
something to the church. Mr. Scofield says that is the future church, but
God does not say that. You cannot take something to a future church.
You can take something only to a present church.
And when he had called unto him his twelve
disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and
to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Matthew
10:1
Whenever the church was started, it was started with a
called-out assembly. The first place in the Bible where I find such a
statement is in Matthew 10:1. I feel the church was started here or before
here. I know it was started some time in the personal ministry of Jesus
Christ.
2. Jesus is the foundation of the
church.
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. Matthew 16:18
The rock he was speaking about was not the pope. The
church was not built on the Pope. The church was built on the foundation of
Jesus. Jesus was the rock being referred to, not Peter. The word Peter
means little pebble. The word rock means a strong. big
rock. They are not the same word. Peter was a little pebble, but the
rock is Jesus.
3. Jesus is its builder.
He said, upon this rock I will build my
church. Our job is not church growth. Our job is soul winning. Jesus
said that He would build the church. Jesus is in the church-building
business. He never told us to build a church. He told us to go soul winning,
and He would do the building of His church. We are witnesses. He never told
us to go into all the world and build churches. Our job is to obey the Great
Commission and His job is to build the church.
4. Jesus attended it, and sang and
preached in it.
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that
he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him,
for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons
unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through
sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all
of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, Saying, I
will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will!
sing praise unto thee. Hebrews 2:9-12
We see here that Jesus went to church. He was quoting
from an Old Testament prophesy by saying that He would declare God's name in
the church. Luke 4 says that it was Jesus custom to go to the
synagogue on the Sabbath Day. He was in a habit of going. When He went to
the cross all the things attached to the synagogue were nailed to the cross
with Him. In the place of the synagogue He gave us the local church.
Jesus preached in the church. I am not talking
necessarily about a church building. They may have met under a tree, in a
barn, or in a house, as they often did in the Bible. But, the fact remains
that Jesus went to church and preached in the church. Jesus also said that
He was going to sing God's praises in the church.
Did Jesus need to go to church? Absolutely. The Bible
says He emptied himself of deity and became a man. He did what He did, not
as God, but as man. Otherwise, He could not have been our pattern. Jesus
needed to go to church because He was a man. It was not to keep Him from
sinning, but for encouragement and fellowship, the same reasons we need to
go to church.
5. Jesus is to be preeminent in the
church.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is
the beginning, the first born from the dead; that in all things he might
have the preeminence. Colossians 1:18
Jesus must have the preeminence in every organization
of the church. He is to have the preeminence in the preaching. He is to have
the preeminence in the singing. I believe that songs about Jesus should be
sung in the church, rather than the high-brow anthems that are used in so
many circles today. Jesus is to have the preeminence in the Christian
school. Jesus is to have the preeminence in the Women's Missionary Society.
Jesus is to have the preeminence in the bus ministry. Jesus is to preeminent
in all of the ministries of the church.
6. Jesus is the head of the church.
And hath put all things under his feet, and gave
him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the
fullness of him that filleth all in all. Ephesians 1:22, 23
And he is the head of the body, the church
... Colossians 1:18a
Jesus is the head of the body. The church is the body
of Christ. The word head is similar to the President of a business.
It means that it is his body in the sense of ownership or control, not in
the sense of being a physical body. The word head means authority.
He is the authority of the church. He is the head of the church like the
owner of a store is the head of that store. The church is a body of people
that belongs to him.
If the body of Christ is all believers, then the
church is all believers, but the church cannot be all believers, because the
word church means a called-out assembly. All believers are
never called out, so the church could not be His body in that sense. There
will be a day when all Christians will be a member of the church, but that
will not be until all Christians are called out. Hebrews 12:23 refers to a
host assembled in Heaven. All believers will not be the church until all
believers are raptured.
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a
beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns...
Revelation 13:la
That word head is the same word found in
Colossians 1:18 and Ephesians 1:22 where Jesus is called the head of the
church. These heads are kings. A king has authority. A king is the head of
his nation and the people which they control form the body. These kings are
called the head just like Jesus is called the head of the church.
And ye are complete in him, which is the head of
all principality and power: Colossians 2:10
Jesus is the head of all principality and power. That
is referring to governments and rulers. Jesus puts up kings and sets down
kings. Jesus is the head of all of the governments and all government
leaders in this world. They cannot do anything that God does not allow them
to do.
He is called the head of principalities and powers
just like He is the head of the church. He is listing something over which
He has control. The world's governments no more make up His body, then
Christians do. It merely signifies authority. He is the authority of the
church, and He is the authority over the world's leaders.
Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as
under the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife. Ephesians 5:22,
23
A man is the head of his wife, but that does not mean
she is his body. It means that he is the authority of the home. This is not
talking about a male head on a female body. As the husband is the head of
the wife, so is Christ the head of the church. What does it mean? As the
wife obeys her husband, so the church is to obey Christ. He is the head or
the authority. In that sense Jesus is the head of the church and the church
is His body. Consequently, the church cannot be an invisible church of all
believers because the body is the church and the church is a called-out
assembly.
This doctrine of all believers being members of the
body of Christ is an attempt by Satan to unite us with people with whom we
are commanded not to unite. It is an effort to say that we are all members
of this body when, in reality, we are not.
7.
Jesus is building a church.
But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of
angels, To the general assembly and church of the first born, which are
written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the
blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Hebrews 12:22-24
All believers will be called out and assembled in the
sky. They will be called unto Jesus, and then all believers will become a
church. God is now in the process of building an army of people which
someday will become a church.
Let me give you three extreme positions regarding this
issue.
1. That the church is the bride
of Christ. Some men teach what we call the doctrine of the
Baptist Bride. They believe that the only people who will be a part of the
bride at the marriage of the Lamb will be Baptists, and all other saved
people will merely be wedding guests. Of course, that is not true. These
people get the body mixed up with the bride. The bride will not be a bride
until we get there, so it will include all believers. The future church will
be the bride. The present church is not the bride; it is the body.
They are also wrong because many Baptist churches are
liberal. How can all Baptists form the bride when there are hundreds of
American Baptist churches that do not even believe that the Bible is the
Word of God. There are some churches that do not call themselves Baptist
which are New Testament churches. If Baptists form the bride, these New
Testament churches will not be in the bride. So, according to them, a
liberal American Baptist church would be in the bride, but a fundamental
church that is not Baptist will not be in the bride. That is totally
untrue.
2. The term the rapture of
the church is unscriptural.
We will not become a church until we assemble in the
sky. At the rapture we will form a church because then we will assemble, but
right now all believers are not yet a church.
3. All believers do not belong to
the church. Somebody needs to set Baptists straight and stop
them from being influenced by the inter-denominational crowd. I am not
opposed to inter-denominational Christians, but I am opposed to their
doctrine about the church. In the average inter-denominational school, many
of those who are preparing for full-time Christian work are studying to
start orphanages, or to be missionary pilots, or to do Christian drama or
Christian movies.
At Hyles-Anderson College we are training men to start
churches. We are training young women to go out and teach in the Christian
schools started by those churches. We are training young men to go out and
lead the singing and be bus directors in those churches. That is the hope
for America.
Chapter Eighteen
The Church and the
State
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and
they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a
terror to good works, but to the evil. Will thou then not be afraid of the
power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he
is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,
be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of
God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must
need be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For this
cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending
continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues:
tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom;fear to whom fear;
honour to whom honour. Romans 13:1-7
The United States Government believes in the
separation of church and state with the Catholics, but not the Baptists. Let
me give you an example. If Mr. Noriega came to the First Baptist Church of
Hammond seeking asylum, the government would break down the doors of the
building to get to him. But, he went to the Catholic embassy in Panama, and
our government did nothing to get to him. Why? Because our government
respects separation of church and state with the Catholics, but not with
other people.
Let me make eleven observations regarding this matter
of the separation of the church and the state.
1. There are two kingdoms.
Again, the Devil taketh him up into an exceeding
high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory
of them; Matthew 4:8
The words kingdoms of the
world shows us that there is a kingdom of the world.
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if
my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should
not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. John
18:36
Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world, so
that means there have to be two kingdoms on this earth. There is the kingdom
of this world and there is the kingdom of our God. God set it up this way.
These two kingdoms have two different kings, the kings of the world and
Jesus, our King.
2. We live in both and are to be
subject to both.
They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto
them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto
God the things that are God's. Matthew 22:21
The Roman Empire was the kingdom of this world under
which they lived at that time. Jesus commanded them to give to God's kingdom
what was His and to give to Caesar's kingdom what was his.
3. Each is to allow the other to
exist and operate. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of this
world are just as separate as the government of Canada and the government of
the United States. These two kingdoms have no more right to try to control
each other than we have to control Canada, or Canada has to control us.
It is more than just the church not influencing the
state, and it is more than the state not running the church. They are two
separate kingdoms. Neither is answerable to the other, and neither is
supposed to operate or run the other. The kingdom of God is not to do
anything to hinder the operation of the government, nor is the government to
do anything to hinder the operation of God's kingdom. It is not the church's
business what the government does, and it is not the government's business
what the church does. They are two kingdoms operating with two different
kings, two different philosophies, two different constitutions, and two
different theories.
4. There are naturally two great
threats. One threat is the state controlling the church, and the
other is the church controlling the state. There are countries in this world
where the church controls the state, and there are countries in this world
where the state controls the church.
5. There are two great
ideologies that embody these threats.
(1) Communism.
Communism is complete control of the church by the state.
(2) Catholicism.
Catholicism is complete control of the state by the church.
These two ideologies are equally deadly and dangerous.
Communism is as deadly and dangerous as Catholicism, and Catholicism is as
deadly and dangerous as Communism. Both are trying to bring these kingdoms
together. The Bible says these are two separate kingdoms and are not to come
together.
To whatever degree a country is communistic, by that
same degree the state controls the church. The state is trying to control
the church in America today, because America is going communistic. The
philosophy of Communism is as prevalent in America today as it was in Russia
35-40 years ago.
To whatever degree a nation is Catholic, by that same
degree the church controls the state. If a nation is completely Catholic,
the church completely controls the state. If a nation is completely
communistic, the state completely controls the church. Show me any country
in this world where the Catholics are a great majority, and I will show you
a country where the church keeps a thumb on the state.
When the Reformation came, the Protestants continued
controlling the state. Martin Luther for the most part controlled the
government of much of Germany. John Calvin did the same in Geneva. Why?
Because they came out of the Catholic church over doctrine, but not over the
issue of the separation of church and state. The Reformation was not
actually an evangelistic endeavor. These reformers took over the churches in
parts of these countries and they controlled the politics and ran the
cities. Why? Because they got it from their mother, Catholicism.
America used to believe this, which is why we did not
have a Catholic president until the mid 1960's. We did not want the Pope
running the country. Even the unsaved people were aware of that in those
days. We knew how it was in other places in the world, and we did not want
it to be that way here in America.
6. Each has its own area of
authority. What is a government supposed to do for its people?
(1) Protect our person.
(2) Protect our property.
(3) Protect our freedom.
Those are the only three things the government is to
do. The government was not started to educate our children. It is not the
church's job to protect our property, that is the government's
responsibility. Government education is of the Devil. It was never intended
by God for the government to train our children. It is the job of the home
and the church. For decades the churches trained the children. The
government took over the education later on, but it was not a part of our
founding.
The church's job is to do God's work. It is not the
government's job to interfere with God's work. It is not the church's job to
interfere with the police department. It is not the government's job to
interfere with the Christian school. The kingdom of God is to spread the
Gospel and do the work of God through the local churches without
interference from the kingdom of this world.
7. We are to honor both.
When the Mayor of Hammond comes to the First Baptist Church, he should be
more intimidated than I am, because I head a more important kingdom than he
does. I do not think I am important, but I think my office is important. I
happen to fill the most important job in the world as a pastor of a church
in the kingdom that is not of this world.
My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle
not with them that are given to change. Proverbs 24:21
The king's kingdom and the Lord's kingdom are not to
be interwoven, or mixed up, but we are to honor both.
8. There is a priority to our
allegiance. Sometimes Christian people say, "Well the Bible says
we are always supposed to obey the government." That is not in the Bible.
The Lord never says to always obey the government.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and
they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a
terror to the good works, but to the evil. Will thou then not be afraid of
the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.
For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is
evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Romans 13:1-4
This passage refers to powers in the plural. The
higher powers are God. God sets up the powers. The higher the power, the
more the subjection. God is the one who ordained the whole thing. He is the
architect of it all. He is the highest power, so our main allegiance is to
be to Him. God ordains others to deter us from the evil. There is nothing
wrong with having a police department, a Governor, a President, or a Mayor,
but they are lower powers than God.
As a preacher, I am His minister. There are areas
where people are to obey me as their pastor, but, if there is a conflict
between the pastor and God, God is the highest power. The same is true with
the secular rulers, such as mayors, governors, or city councilmen. Our major
allegiance is to the Highest Power and as long as other powers do not
conflict with the Highest Power, than we are supposed to be obedient to the
other powers as well.
For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are
God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render
therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom
custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Romans 13:6, 7
God says we are to obey the higher powers, but our
first allegiance is to the highest power. If there is a conflict between the
lower powers, the higher the power, the more the allegiance. Let me
illustrate.
If the city of Hammond passed a law stating that we
could not soul winning, we would still go soul winning. We are going to keep
the law of God. He commands us to go soul winning, so we would go soul
winning. If they put is in jail, we would witness to the jailer. That is
what Paul did.
Consider a few examples.
* Daniel prayed at a certain time each day in a
certain way. They passed a law declaring he could not do it. Daniel decided
not to change his prayer life because of a law of man. Daniel broke the law
and was put into the lion's den. He was subject to the highest power first
and the lesser powers next.
If that law had said not to burn leaves when the wind
was blowing from the north, Daniel could have obeyed that law, but when the
king exerted authority over the other kingdom, God's man refused to obey it.
* Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego broke the law.
The law said they had to bow down and worship a golden
image. The kingdom of God said, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image.... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them... Suddenly, there was a
conflict between the kingdom of this world that says bow down and worship
the image, and the kingdom of God which says not to bow down and worship the
image. God says we are to obey His law over this kingdom's law.
The world's kingdom has no right to make a law that is
against God's kingdom. The world's kingdom has no right to say who can and
who cannot pray. This world's kingdom has no right to say whom you may or
may not worship. This world's kingdom has no right to say whether or not you
may go soul winning. Only God's kingdom has the right to tell us how to do
the work of God.
And they called them, and commanded them not to
speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and
said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we
have seen and heard. Acts 4:18-20
A law was passed that they could not speak in the name
of Jesus. They got over in the other kingdom. Washington has no authority
over the program of the First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, or the
schools we operate. It is none of their business. It is none of our business
to pass a speed limit law or the fire code. That is the kingdom of this
world's business, but the kingdom of the world should pass no laws that have
to do with the program of the kingdom of God.
And daily in the temple, and in every house, they
ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Acts 5:42
The kingdom of this world said to cease. The kingdom
of God said we will not cease. They had passed a law that infringed on the
wrong kingdom. The kingdoms of this world had passed a law that had to do
with the kingdom that is not of this world, but there was already a law
passed by the king of the kingdom of God. He said, Go ye therefore and
teach all nations.
The law of the one kingdom said not to speak or teach
in the name of Jesus. The other kingdom commanded us to speak and teach in
the name of Jesus. In cases where you have a direct law in the kingdom of
God, and a direct opposite law in the kingdom of this world, we are to obey
the kingdom of God over the kingdom of this world.
It is amazing how many Christians criticized Lester
Roloff when he was fighting his battles in Corpus Christi. The state of
Texas said they would close his homes if he refused to operate them the way
the state told him to. Lester Roloff refused to obey their laws because they
would have forced him to disobey the laws of God regarding the way his
ministry operated. Why have a Christian home if you are forced to operate it
like a heathen home? The very purpose was to have a home which was
controlled by the kingdom of God. I do not care what the Congress or the
Supreme Court says, they have no right to get over into the other kingdom.
They are totally separate kingdoms.
The government does not want you to have anybody above
them. They want to run your life. I am going to stand up and hold the banner
high to save the freedom of the kingdom of God, so that the kingdom of this
world will not boss us and destroy our homes and families. Communism is
dedicated to the destruction of the American family.
9. The accreditation of church
schools is one kingdom ruling the other. The kingdom of this
world has no more right to accredit the kingdom that is not of this world
than the kingdom that is not of this world has a right to accredit state
universities.
Brother Roloff used to go up and down this country
warning preachers not to get a license from the government, because it is
the kingdom of this world running God's kingdom. The kingdom of this world
has no business to run the kingdom of God. None at all. Accreditation of
church schools is one kingdom telling the other how to operate.
The fire inspector has the right to come out and
inspect our buildings to be sure they are safe because that is part of his
responsibility of protecting us. I am for that because I love the young
people in those schools. I am more concerned about their safety than he is.
He is of the kingdom of this world, and the king of this world is supposed
to provide for the safety of our persons.
Whom we choose to teach in our schools is the kingdom
of God. What is taught in our schools is the kingdom of God. Nobody in the
kingdom of this world has a right to interfere in those matters. Most people
do not understand accreditation. The philosophy of accreditation is one
kingdom trying to run the other. If you go to an accredited school, you are
going to a school that is controlled by the kingdom of this world, which
means that they are controlling the kingdom of God.
They want to have a part in training our teachers. Our
country is going to the Devil because of the teachers the world has trained.
Why would we start Christian schools so they could train our people to be
just like theirs? We started Christian schools because we were sick and
tired of the government ruining our kids. It is not their business to train
our kids. It is their business to keep us safe, protect our property, and
keep our freedom. It is not their business to run our schools. Accreditation
is a transgression between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God.
10. Neither is to tax the other.
They are not supposed to tax us, and we are not supposed to tax
them. I have as much right to call the City Council and Mayor of Hammond and
demand their tithes, as they have to tax the church. We went to court when
some of the city fathers wanted to tax our parking garage. The parking
garage is as much as part of First Baptist Church as our parking lot across
the street. We are not as a church to be forced to pay taxes to the kingdom
of this world.
11. Neither should support the
other's schools. It is not the job of one kingdom to pay for the
schools of the other kingdom; yet, part of our taxes are used to pay the
salaries of the heathen, godless people who teach in the public schools.
They have no more right to tax me to pay for their kingdom schools than I
have a right to tax them to pay for our kingdom schools.
I am unalterably opposed to tuition credit. The
kingdom of this world is sneaky. They will offer to give us a $500
allowance, if our child goes to a private school. It sounds good, but who is
going to decide which schools qualify and which ones do not? The world's
kingdom is going to decide. They will then want to check our schools. We are
not putting our school up for governmental approval.
How is the government going to decide what schools are
approved? They will have to check out the school, at which point they have
entered into the kingdom over which they do not belong. We have invited
them, and we have chosen to lose our freedom.
That is the philosophy behind the separation of church
and state. It is two different kingdoms, neither of which is supposed to
govern the affairs of the other. I believe that there will be people in
America who will have to die or go to jail over these issues within the next
twenty-five years. This is an important part of the teaching we need to
perpetuate among our people, to better help them understand all they need to
know about the church.
Chapter Nineteen
What Changes a Church
I have seen great churches all across this nation
totally change after the pastor who built the church to its greatest days
went off the scene, or passed away. That may happen at First Baptist Church,
but I have done my best to prepare my people for the pitfalls ahead. I have
preached in the great churches of the last generation. I have seen many of
those churches decay. I have seen the change that has come in those
churches. I have watched carefully what has caused that change, especially
in the case of the pastor passing away or retiring.
The first time that I met Dr. Lee Roberson, he was
forty-three years of age. Dr. Roberson stayed for many years at the Highland
Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, but the day came when Dr. Roberson felt
he could no longer do the job because of his age. He was around seventy-five
years of age, and he felt that he should turn it over to somebody else. One
Sunday night he and Mrs. Roberson walked out the center aisle together, and
his ministry there, after over forty years, was over. I had the privilege to
preach over 125 times at the Highland Park Baptist church at Chattanooga.
When I met Dr. G. B. Vick for the first time, he was
about forty years old, but the years came and went. He pastored the largest
church in the world at the time, the Temple Baptist Church in Detroit,
Michigan. I was preaching in Rock Springs, Wyoming. I called my secretary,
Mrs. McKinney, and she told that she had just received a phone call from the
Baptist Bible College at Springfield, Missouri, where Dr. Vick was speaking.
Dr. Vick was at his desk and suddenly fell over dead. He had pastored there
for over thirty years.
For forty-two years I have watched a generation of
churches rise and fall. I doubt there is a man in this generation who has
preached in more churches in America than I have. I doubt there is a man who
has counseled more pastors than I have. I have watched a generation of
churches decay. I am going to do everything I can to see to it that fifty
years from now the First Baptist Church of Hammond will still have the altar
full every Sunday and still be the same as it is today.
Change is a state.
Change is constant.
Dissatisfaction is a state.
If you are not satisfied with what you have, you will not be satisfied
with what you get. If you are not satisfied with the job you have, you will
not be satisfied with the job you get. If you are not satisfied with the
house you have, you will not be satisfied with the house you get. If you are
not satisfied with the car you drive, you will not be satisfied with the car
you get. Change is a state.
When you change, you never get where you are going,
because when you get where you thought you were going, you do not want to
stop, so you keep on changing. What starts the change? What causes a church
to change?
* What causes a church to change?
*
1. A pastor change.
(1) The people want a change.
Something in people causes them to want a different kind of
man. It is like politics. When the Republicans are in, they get blamed for
everything. When the Democrats get in, they get blamed for everything. The
same thing happens in a church. It is easy for the people to get enamored
with a man who is totally different than the preacher they had before.
Suddenly you have change almost just for the sake of change.
(2) The people will not follow
the new pastor even if he is
what he ought to be. The former pastor did things a certain
way, and the people will not follow the new pastor because he does them
differently. They are accustomed to the way things were done rather than to
following the man of God.
(3) The people call a good
speaker or a good personality. Preaching is the most
important thing in the church, but the best preacher in America could not
operate a church like First Baptist Church, unless he knew something about
business. A church should not call a pastor just because he has a
personality with charisma, or because he is a good preacher. Too often
churches make the calling of a pastor more of a personality or popularity
contest.
I have known some great soul-winning churches which
have gone down because the church called another kind of preacher. Some have
changed because they called a good man the people would not accept. Others
have changed because they called a pulpiteer only, and a not a man who could
operate the business and administration of the church.
(4) Some churches change because
the church falls in the hands of a few people who are either wealthy or
influential.
I knew of a church that lost its soul winning because
it allowed seven wealthy men to choose the pastor. They changed its entire
direction and practically destroyed everything that the great pastor before
had built. Most of the people wanted an old fashioned fundamental preacher,
but the control was in the hands of those seven men.
2. The pastor changes.
Churches change because of what is behind the pulpit. I am not the best
Christian in the church, but I am the Pastor-Bishop-Builder of the church. I
keep my hands on everything that goes on in the church. I go out to the
college to keep the direction right there. I meet every week with the
administrators of all our schools to see to it that they keep on the right
track. Every ministry of the church must be watched, or something will creep
in that could change the church.
You cannot imagine the pressure of an independent,
hell-raising, barn-storming, window-rattling, shingle-pulling,
temperamental, fundamental Baptist preacher. There is more pressure on a man
who preaches the truth of God's Word than there is on any other single
profession in the world. The greatest leaders in this world are not in White
Houses and in palatial mansions; they are in the parsonages of America.
There are several ways that a preacher can change.
(1) He loses his motivation.
Dr. Elmer Towns said that hardly any pastor continues to see
his church grow after his fortieth birthday. Why? Because the pastor loses
his motivation. It is easy for a young preacher who is pastoring his first
church to be excited with the newness of the challenge. Just the idea of
being a pastor and the opportunity to preach are enough to keep him
motivated for a while. That is some of the best preaching he will ever do.
His entire motivation is to preach what he believes is right and what the
people need.
After awhile, the difficulties of the ministry begin
to wear on him. The honeymoon with the people begins to wear off. The
newness is gone, and people start to get upset with him for not doing things
the way they think things should be done. Soon, he starts to get discouraged
or disillusioned. It is not much fun to him any more. That is what happens
to pastors.
I work incredibly hard to stay motivated because I
want to go out with the same zeal I had when I started. I want to go out
hating the Devil just as much as I did when I started. I want to go out
hollering as loud as I did when I started. It is not an easy thing for a
preacher to keep himself motivated.
(2) He loses his vision.
Proverbs 29:18 says, Where there is no vision, the people perish.
That means when a leader has lost his vision for the members, the
members perish. It does not mean that if I have no vision for myself, I will
perish, but if I have no vision for my people, they will perish.
I have visions for my church. I have visions for the
young people. My heart is broken when the young people do not fulfill the
visions I have for them. I have visions for the kind of young ladies that
our young men will marry. I have visions for the kind of young men our young
ladies will marry. I have visions for Hyles-Anderson College. I have visions
for Hammond Baptist Schools. I have visions for the First Baptist Church of
Hammond. I have visions for the kind of Christians I want my people to be.
It is so sad to see preachers who have lost their
vision. The motto for my ministry has always been: I will not use my
people to build my work; I will use my work to build my people.
When I stood outside and watched our building burn to
the ground back in 19641 did not shed one single tear, but I have sat in my
office and wept for hours because of a person in the church who went astray.
My vision is not for buildings; it is for my people.
What happens is the work becomes more important to the
preacher than his people. His prestige, or his standing in the
ecclesiastical neighborhood, becomes more important than his people. Money
becomes more important than the people. I never dreamed my church would
become as big as it did, but I had a vision that the young people would turn
out right. The older a preacher gets, the more difficult it is to maintain
the vision.
(3) The pastor loses his bite.
A preacher needs to be able to keep on preaching hard even as
he grows older and begins to mellow. The older I become, the more difficult
it is. The more I love my people, the more difficult it is. I do not want to
scold my people because I love them.
A preacher has to keep his bite. A preacher without a
bold streak will not amount to anything. Too many preachers start getting
soft, and, before they know it, they have changed.
(4) The older people settle down.
I preached at most of the greatest churches in this nation
over the past forty years. I have also gone back and preached in many of
those same churches after they changed. Here is what happened to them. They
started out with a group of young people who were excited about building the
church and winning the lost. They had the bus routes, went soul winning, and
built the Sunday school classes. Over the years, they retired to the pew.
They are fundamental people, but they are not busy for the Lord like they
used to be.
The best way for a church to change is for the older
people to quit the choir, quit their soul winning, quit their bus routes,
quit their Sunday School classes, quit bringing folks to church, and quit
getting excited about big days. I have seen it happen. I have seen those
older people settle down. I have seen the people that used to go soul
winning not go soul winning anymore. If you want your grandchildren to have
a great church, you have got to keep it great until they get there. How
important it is not to allow the people to retire from the work of God!
(5) No new families come to
replace the older ones that settle down. The secret of the
First Baptist church of Hammond, Indiana, rests in the new, young couples
and families that come to the church. Many years ago I started a young
couples class with forty-seven people. That young couples class is now the
class that meets in our auditorium. A few years later we started another
couples class. Brother Colsten now teaches that couples class that used to
be a young couples class. Most of the people are in their fifties or over. A
few years later we started another one, and now Brother Moffitt is teaching
that class of middle-age people. Then we started another one, and another
one, and we kept on starting them as the years went by.
That is the secret. We always have several hundred new
people in the church who came in with the new wave, and I am always on a
honeymoon with that new wave.
I am concerned about having a crowd that is red-hot
for God, the Bible, the Gospel, and soul winning. Fifty years from now I
want there to be a man in the pulpit of the First Baptist Church who is
still preaching against mixed swimming; against women wearing shorts and
pants in public, and that if you are not a soul winner, you are not right
with God. As long as I live, I am going to do all I can to keep it that way.
I love our children. I want them to have First Baptist
Church like my generation has had. If that is going to happen here, or
anywhere, it will not be on accident, but on purpose.
Chapter Twenty
Outside Interference,
the Enemy of the
Church
The elders which are among you I exhort, who am
also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also
a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock
of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof not by constraint,
but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as
being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. I
Peter 5:1-3
The New Testament churches grew to be extremely large.
They started off with 120 and added 3,000. Then they added 5,000 which
brought the total to 8,120. The Bible says that they multiplied. The
smallest number you can multiply by is two, so they had to have a minimum of
16,240 church members in the one church in Jerusalem.
When Paul was writing to the church at Ephesus, he was
writing to an extremely large church. The church at Jerusalem is estimated
to have had somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 church members. The same is
true with the churches at Ephesus, Antioch, Corinth, and other churches.
These churches had many pastors just as we have many
pastors at First Baptist Church. The larger churches began to assume
authority over and interfere with the smaller churches, because there were
so many things the larger churches could do. For example, today a larger
church can provide literature for smaller churches.
Several things came into the church that brought
opposition.
1. Salvation was attacked.
They became very ceremonial, and the preaching of salvation by grace
through faith was attacked.
2. Baptismal regeneration became
very popular.
3. Infant baptism became popular.
In those days infant baptism was by immersion. That is really
where sprinkling originated. They thought it was too dangerous to immerse
these infants, so they began to pour water on them and then, to sprinkle
them.
4. Baptism was done by sprinkling
rather than by immersion. After they began sprinkling babies,
they extended it to adults, and began sprinkling them as well.
Opposition grew as the churches grew. That is always
what happens. The Devil is not concerned if we are not reaching anybody. He
is concerned only if we are reaching the lost. Persecution came to these
churches because they were reaching the lost.
* John the Baptist was beheaded.
* Steven was stoned.
* Matthew was killed in Ethiopia.
* Mark was dragged through the streets until dead.
* Luke was hanged.
* Peter was crucified upside down.
* Andrew was tied to a cross.
* James was beheaded.
* Philip was crucified and stoned.
* Thomas was pierced with lances.
* James the Less was thrown from the temple and beaten
to death.
* Jude was shot with arrows.
* Matthias was stoned.
* Paul was beheaded.
This was happening to the churches because they were
growing so rapidly.
At that point these churches were independent
churches. They had some influence on each other, but they had no
organization whatsoever. As these churches grew, they not only grew in
number, but they spread to other parts of the world. In fact, they covered
the entire Roman Empire. As they grew, they wanted to get together. A desire
to unite is always caused by a lack of faith. People organize because they
do not think God can take care of them.
In the year 313 a new emperor came to the Roman
Empire, whose name was Constantine. He had a vision of a fiery cross in the
sky and the words, By this thou shall conquer.
Constantine saw that as a sign that he was supposed to conquer for
the cause of Christianity, so Constantine was supposedly converted. Maybe he
had a genuine conversion experience, but Constantine got the idea that he
was supposed to conquer Christianity by that vision of the cross.
He foresaw a marriage of the Roman Empire and the
church. He desired to cover the entire Roman Empire with Christianity, so he
brought the church and the state together. This was an attempt by
Constantine to have a world religion and a world political system. This
concept was started by Nimrod back in Genesis, but it never had been
organized in the New Testament church until Constantine did it in 313.
Constantine basically got all these churches together and started a
Christian state religion.
There were some churches that would not get involved.
These were Baptist churches. They refused to get involved in this new world
council, or Roman council of churches.
It has always been the desire of the Devil to get all
of us under one canopy. Union is not God's idea. It is the devil's idea. The
union and organization of churches or nations is never of God. The United
Nations is not of God. It is of the Devil. The World Council of Churches is
not of God. It is of the Devil. The first world council of churches since
the New Testament church was Catholicism. Constantine wanted universal
government and a universal church. From that came the doctrine of the
invisible or the universal church.
Most Baptists were a part of this union movement, but
there were a few who refused and remained independent. That is normally the
way things happen. Let me quote from a newspaper article. Southern
Baptists and Roman Catholics, the nation's two largest denominations
generally have been regarded as doctrinally far apart, but their scholars
find they basically agree. Despite their terminology and some real
differences we do share a basic understanding of what it means to be
followers of Jesus Christ by the grace of God, says their joint report.
After ten years of periodic discussions, the
Baptist-Catholic Dialogue group quoting Ephesians 4:5 concludes
we not only confess, but experience one Lord, one faith, one baptism.
Those Southern Baptist churches are not New
Testament churches. Baptist perpetuity has always been in the independent
Baptist churches.
In 869 Constantine's hierarchy divided. The Greek
Catholic church separated from the Roman Catholic church. The Greek Catholic
church left for many reasons. One of the major reasons was that they did not
want to be governed by Rome. They wanted their freedom; yet, they turned
around and would not give people freedom under them. Most people do not want
freedom; they want their freedom. People who fight for freedom will
often turn around and enslave others if they can get away with it.
In the sixteenth century we had what is called the
Reformation. In the Reformation, Protestants came out. For example, in 1541
the Presbyterians came out, in 1530 the Lutherans came out, and in 1531 the
church of England came out.
When the Lutherans came out, they fought for their own
freedom and then enslaved others. The Presbyterians did the same thing. In
every case, there were still Baptists who refused to be thwarted. While
others were building cathedrals, they were in store front buildings. While
others were building coliseums, they were being killed in those coliseums,
but they kept on going. They were the only ones who were preaching the
Gospel and getting people saved, so they kept on growing.
The more they were persecuted, the more they grew. The
Presbyterians tried to put them down, but they could not do it. The church
of England tried to suppress them and could not. The Lutherans tried to
suppress them and failed. What kept these Baptist alive? A promise that
Jesus made in Matthew 16:18, upon this rock I will build my church; and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The gates of hell were
the Roman Catholic church and the churches that came out of the Roman
Catholic church. Constantine did the world a great disservice when he
decided to unite the church and the state.
Most people believe that our founding fathers came for
religious freedom. No, they did not. They came for their religious
freedom. For example, in the northern colonies two religions basically
started there:
Congregationalists and Presbyterians. In the southern
colonies you basically had Episcopalians, or the church of England. Our
founding fathers came to America trying to find freedom, but when they got
here they established freedom only for themselves. They fought and died for
their freedom of religion.
In the northern colonies, the Congregationalists and
Presbyterians made it against the law for Baptists to exist. In the southern
colonies, the Episcopalians made it against the law for the Baptists to
exist. But, just as Constantine had trouble with the Baptists, so did those
founding fathers. In fact, throughout history, every group that tried to
promote the idea of a state-church has had no success in snuffing out the
light of the independent Baptists. These Baptist people were always causing
trouble, splitting off of somebody, preaching the Gospel, getting people
saved, and baptizing them after they got saved.
Nothing has changed. Throughout history, we have been
the unpopular group because we have refused to unite with the other
acceptable religions of the day. The Ministerial Association of Hammond,
Indiana, does not know what to do with me. When I first came to Hammond, it
was amazing how many resolutions they passed against us. I would get a
letter every month informing me that the local Ministerial Association had
passed another resolution telling us something we could not do. We went
ahead and did it anyway.
Our crowd has always caused trouble because our crowd
is for freedom for everybody. The Presbyterians, Congregationalists and
Episcopalians in the colonies declared that it was against the law for
anybody to refuse infant baptism, or to preach the Gospel. The penalty was
imprisonment, being fined, being whipped, having your property taken, or
being banished. Banishment meant that you were turned over to the Indians.
That happened in America.
Two men who were banished were Roger Williams and John
Clark. Both of these men made friends with the Indians and saved their
colony, because the Indians were going to destroy them. Instead, the Indians
did what they said.
Roger Williams and John Clark had no place to have
freedom of worship. They found a little piece of land and started their own
colony, but they could not get permission from England to be recognized as a
colony. John Clark went and stayed in England for many years, lobbying to
try to get their little colony recognized as a colony. That little colony is
now the state of Rhode Island. The state of Rhode Island was finally
recognized as a colony. It was started by a couple of Baptist preachers.
They were finally recognized and drew up their
Constitution. The Constitution of the State of Rhode Island included
religious freedom for everybody. It was the world's first governmental
declaration of religious liberty. A little group of born-again, blood-washed
Baptists who were preaching the Gospel, baptizing their converts, and
refusing to baptize their babies were the ones preaching and teaching
separation of church and state, and religious freedom for everybody.
Today the only religious group in the world that is
actively fighting for freedom for everybody is independent Baptists. Yet,
today we have Baptist fellowship groups that are just as ruthless to those
who refuse to join them as the Catholics ever were. They do not kill those
who refuse to be a part of their group.
From the days of Constantine, to this very day, there
have been independent Baptist churches all over this country, who are
fighting in the courts for their right to exist, for the freedom of their
schools, and for the freedom not to be licensed with State Educational
Departments.
1. Every generation must fight for
its own freedom and for the freedom of others. Every generation
must declare its own independence. Every generation of local churches must
decide to be free.
2. We often fight for our freedom
and at the same time enslave others.
3. We start the new structure with
the same seeds of death that caused the last generation to die.
You can go to
the so-called independent Baptist annual meetings, and
it is just like it used to be in the Southern Baptist meetings. We pull out
of that which enslaved us and then start building the exact same machinery
that caused them to die. It is not just being enslaved to bad people that is
bad. It is being enslaved that is bad. It is not losing your freedom
to tyrants that is bad. It is losing your freedom that is bad.
Here is what happens. Here is an old preacher who has
been enslaved. He has been called a nut and a screwball all of his life. He
decides that he is not going to put up with the slavery anymore. He is going
to be free. A group of those little guys get together and become
independent. Suddenly they see stars in their eyes. They have a chance to be
somebody after all. They get to be the president of the Independent Baptist
Fellowship of their county. It has started all over again.
Totally independent churches are the answer. It is the
philosophy of interference outside the local church that is wrong. It is not
whether it is good or bad interference. Our churches are dying because we
are letting somebody off in some office somewhere write the literature that
our people teach on Sunday. The answer is cooperation only, but not to be
enslaved, and not to enslave. That is the difference between independent
Baptist churches and every other religious movement the world has ever seen
since the New Testament church was started. The difference is, we will not
be enslaved and we will not enslave!
Chapter Twenty-One
The Church As the
Bride of Christ
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of
God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For
the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the
church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is
subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every
thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing
of water by the word That he might present it to himself a glorious church,
not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy
and without blemish. Ephesians 5:21-27
Baptists have been educated by
inter-denominationalists, so we have garnered much of the doctrine that was
taught by the Protestants and not by our Baptists forefathers. One of those
doctrines is concerning the bride of Christ. Our
inter-denominational friends have influenced us to believe that all
believers are the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, and the
church.
Recently, I was reading a book by a well known
interdenominationalist. All through the book he presumed that all believers
formed the church, and if you are saved, you are a member of the church. No,
if you are saved, you are saved, but you are not automatically a member of
the church. I have no axes to grind with him about salvation. I strongly
disagree with him about the church. Likewise, most Christians have
automatically assumed that everybody who is saved is a member of the
bride of Christ.
All believers do not form the bride of Christ.
1. The word bride is mentioned only
five times in the entire New Testament. John the Baptist used it
once when talking about being the friend of the bride. They thought he must
be the Saviour. He told them that he was just a wedding guest and that the
Bridegroom was coming later. He was not referring to all Christian people.
He was merely talking about himself.
The word bride is not mentioned in any of the
Epistles. In fact, it is not mentioned again until Revelation 18:23. It is
also mentioned in Revelation 21:2, Revelation 21:9 and Revelation 22:17.
And the light of a candle shall shine no more at
all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard
no more at all in thee: Revelation 18:23a
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Revelation 21:2
And there came unto me one of the seven angels
which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talk with me,
saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.
Revelation 21:9
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
Revelation 22:17a
Apart from John talking about the bridegroom in a
brief illustration about himself, there is not a single mention of the word
bride, in any connection, until Revelation 18:23. The rapture takes place in
Revelation 4:1, so the word bride is not mentioned until after the
rapture.
Revelation 21:2 refers to the New Jerusalem coming
down from God out of Heaven after the millennium.
Revelation 21:9 and Revelation 22:17 refer to the same
thing, all of which transpires after the rapture.
All saved people do not become a bride until after the
rapture. There is no bride of Christ today. There is no place
in the Bible where it mentions anything about us now being the
bride of Christ. That is only in some inter-denominational
theologian's commentary. It is not in the Bible.
I make an issue out of this because I am bothered by
the fact that fundamental Baptist churches are swallowing the fallacy
that all believers form the church, the body of Christ, and the bride of
Christ; none of which is true.
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him:
for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which
are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. Revelation 19:7, 9a
The marriage supper of the Lamb takes place after
the marriage. It is the reception. Revelation 19:7 talks about the marriage
of the Lamb. The marriage of the Lamb takes place during the seven years
after the rapture. We are caught up in the air and during that seven
year period, there is the marriage of the Lamb.
A woman becomes a bride at marriage and not
before. The marriage of the Lamb is in the air after the rapture. Only
then will we become a bride. You become a bride after the
marriage, so we will not form the bride of Christ until after the
rapture. The word bride is not mentioned in the entire Bible concerning
God's people until after the rapture, because we are not His bride
until the wedding has been performed.
All believers are members of his family, but all
believers are not members of the church. You must join a church to be a
member of a local body. The church is His body, so all believers are not in
His body. All believers are not in the church, and all believers are
not in His body. When Jesus comes again, at the rapture all believers
will be called out and will assemble in Heaven. All believers will then
become members of the church, because then we will all be a called out
assembly. That called-out assembly, or church, will become his bride,
but this does not happen until the rapture.
2. There is no mention of the church
now being His bride. In all of the letters to the churches there
is no mention of them being His bride. In fact, the word "bride" is not
mentioned in any of them.
3. The bride and the body are never
the same in this age. There are people who believe that they are
the same. Consequently, they believe that only the people who belong to the
New Testament church are members of the bride and that everybody else will
be wedding guests in Heaven. That is not right. All people who belong to a
New Testament church are simply church members now. At the rapture when all
of us form a church in the sky, all believers will be the bride and the
church, but this is after we have been called out and have assembled.
4. The future church will be the
bride.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as
Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Ephesians 5:23
The local church is His body by possession. When it
says that He is the saviour of the body, it means that the only way to
continue being called a local church is to continue being purified by Jesus.
Speaking to the church at Ephesus, Revelation 2 says,
.. . repent, and do thy first works; or I will come
unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick.... The candlestick
is the church. He is saying that He would not recognize them as a church
unless they got back to soul winning.
Jesus is the saviour of the body. The body is the
church, or the called-out assembly. The only way a church can continue being
a New Testament church is to yield to Him and He will preserve it.
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the
flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you the overseers, to feed
the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood. Acts 20:28
And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the
elders of the church. Acts 20:17
Paul called for the preachers of the church, not
churches, in Ephesus. It is referring to the local church in Ephesus.
These preachers at Ephesus could not possibly feed all believers. They could
feed only that local assembly; yet, he commands them to feed the whole
assembly of God which He hath purchased with His own blood. Jesus purchased,
not only our salvation, but He also purchased the local church when He died
on the cross. He not only died to save us from our sins, but also so that we
could have an organization to feed and mature us in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also
loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word That he might present it to
himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing;
but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25
The word sanctify means to set apart.
The local church is not the bride of Christ, but it is set apart to become
the bride of Christ. In Bible days, an engagement was stricter than it is
now. It was a legal and binding contract, and could not be broken.
I will be His bride, but nothing can allow the
contract to be broken. Neither party can break the contract.
We sing, "A glorious church without a spot or
wrinkle, washed in the blood of the Lamb" I am not against singing this,
but it is not yet true. The church has spots, and it has wrinkles, otherwise
Jesus would not need to keep on washing it. At the rapture we will be a
glorious church. The word glorious means perfect. We will be a
glorified church when all the believers are caught up in the air. Our bodies
will be changed, we will be like Him, and we will be without spot or
wrinkle. Then we also will be His bride. We are not yet fit to be His bride.
He wants a glorious bride without a spot or wrinkle.
When the rapture takes place and all of us are caught
up in the air, the church, the body, and the bride will all be the same. We
will not be the bride until we get to the wedding, but we are already
sanctified or set apart.
The church is the only institution in this world that
was purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is His unit of battle. It is
His dining hall where we are fed. It is His arsenal where we get our
weapons.
The Bible gives no evidence that all Christians are a
church. The word church is the ekklesia, meaning
called-out assembly. When did all believers ever assemble? They
did not. In Acts 7, the Israelites were called a church, but they were not
called a church in Egypt because they were not assembled in Egypt. It talks
about the church in the wilderness. They became a church when they were
called out of Egypt and assembled in the wilderness.
On the Passover night, they were delivered from the
bondage of Egypt and were called out into the wilderness where they
assembled around the tabernacle. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of
fire by night guided them. There they assembled and were called a church
because they were a called-out assembly. There was no church
in the Old Testament, except when God's people assembled in the wilderness.
Likewise, God's people will not be a church until we
are out of this heathen land and are caught up to assemble in the sky. Then
we become the church, and then we will be married to Christ at the marriage
of the Lamb. We are already members of the family of God. We are going to
Heaven when we die, and we are going to form a group at the rapture that
will be His bride. Until then, the church and the body are the same because
the church is the called-out assembly and that called-out assembly is the
body of Christ.
Maybe this worries you a. little. All of your life you
have been taught that we are the bride of Christ. What I have
explained in this chapter is exactly what Baptists were taught historically.
Too much of our theology has come from those who came from Protestant
backgrounds, like the inter-denominational colleges. We must go back to the
truth of the Bible and teach our people the truth concerning the church and
its importance to the work of Christ.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Catholic
Influence
on Baptist Churches
and How It Got There
And there came one of the seven angels which has
the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will
shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many
waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the
inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her
fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I
saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy,
having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having
a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her
fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the
saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I
wondered with great admiration. And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst
thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast
that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. Revelation
17:1-7
Catholics have had an unbelievable influence on our
Baptist churches. I am going to take you step by step to reveal exactly how
that influence took place.
In the Bible, a bad woman is a symbol of false
religion, and a good woman symbolizes the true faith in Jesus Christ. Here
we have an introduction to a false religion, the great whore. Notice that
this whore sitteth upon many waters. The many waters represent
many Gentile nations of the earth. That means she is a universal whore.
Whatever her religion is, it is a universal religion, which has joined
together the kings of the earth. It is referring to a union of church and
state.
The word fornication goes with the word
whore. It means an unholy relationship without
love. This religion does not love the state, but for her own gain,
attaches herself to the state. The state, for her own gain, interacts with
this religion.
There are two beasts in Revelation 13. One is a
political beast and the other an ecclesiastical beast. The political beast
is the head of something like the United Nations. The ecclesiastical beast
is head of something like the World Council of Churches. This false religion
is sitting upon this beast, which means there is a union of church and
state.
Daniel 2 gives us a picture of a big image or beast.
That beast's head is gold, dressed in arms of silver, with belly and legs of
brass and feet and toes of iron and clay. Those four metals represent four
empires that have conquered the world. The first empire was the Babylonian
Empire. The second was the Empire of the Medes and Persians, conquered by
the Grecian Empire. Then there is the Roman Empire. There is one world
empire that has not yet come, and that is the ten toes of iron and clay.
The Bible says there will be another world empire that
will have ten kings. It will be a revival of the Roman Empire. The ten kings
in that empire will be something like the United Nations. It will actually
be a Western Confederacy, over which the anti-Christ will have control. That
empire will be very wealthy.
This woman represents the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
She is the mother of harlots. When all the little children have come back to
her and reunited into one great false religion, the Roman Catholic church
will sit on the ten-kingdom empire. The Catholic church, the National
Council of Churches, and the United Nations, or revived Roman Empire, or
European Common Market will all be together. All of the major religions in
this world will be together, and all the major western nations of this world
will be together. They will all line up against Russia.
I want you to notice several things about her.
1. She says she is a universal
church. The word Catholic means universal. Today, most Baptist
preachers believe in what they call the universal or invisible church. That
was unheard of until this century. There is, of course, no such thing as the
universal, invisible church. Baptists, all the way back to the Anabaptist
days, believed in the local New Testament church.
2. She possesses formalism in her
worship. Roman Catholicism has always been for robed clergy and a
robed choir. Up until this century you could not find a Baptist church that
had a robed choir. For 1900 years Baptist churches did not have them,
because the Roman Catholic churches did. That is why I would never wear a
robe when I preach. Until this century robes were unheard of in a Baptist
church.
It is shocking how many Baptist churches have three
candles on their communion table. Until this century, no Baptist church
would consider having a worship center.
Until this century Baptist churches never called a
church building a House of God. Spurgeon used the word meeting place
to describe his building. He did not call his church building the House of
God.
Baptists did not use the term sanctuary until
this century.
Baptists did not use anthems in church until this
century. Until this century you would never have heard classical music in a
Baptist church. Baptist people, historically, have not been people of great
wealth, nor were they people of what the world calls culture and refinement.
Ornate buildings are unique to this century for
Baptist churches. I dare you to find the cathedrals that Baptists have
built. You will find great cathedrals built by the Catholics and her babies,
but not by the Baptists. It is unique to this century.
Baptist preachers, until this century, have never used
clergy titles, such as Reverend.
Baptist churches allowing themselves or their schools
to be licensed or accredited is totally unique to this age.
The Catholics and others have catechism classes a
person must take before they can join the church. Now the same thing is
going on in Baptist churches. When I went to First Baptist Church, you had
to meet before a committee, and be examined and approved before you could be
baptized. The book of Acts says that the New Testament church added daily
such as were being saved. In Baptist churches all over this country you have
waiting periods, which are nothing more than a form of catechism.
Think about it. Baptists had none of these things
until this century:
* Universal church
* Formal services
* Robes
* Worship centers
* Buildings called the House of God
* The term sanctuary
* Anthems
* Classical music
* Ornate buildings
* Clergy titles
* Union of church and state
* Catechism
* Waiting periods for baptism
What happened? The Reformation brought forth
Protestants from the Catholic church. They left the Catholic church
basically over the issue of justification by faith, so basically it was a
doctrinal withdrawal. These people are the children of the mother of
harlots. The Baptist churches already existed before the Reformation. Since
Jesus started the church, there always have been New Testament Baptist
churches. Originally, you had the Baptist churches and the Catholic church.
The Reformation brought about the creation of the Protestant groups.
I admire the Reformationists. I admire the men who are
now fighting for the Bible in the Southern Baptist Convention. I am not a
Southern Baptist, and could not be a Southern Baptist, but there is nothing
wrong with admiring their courage. We can admire the Protestants, but the
fact still remains that they look very much like their mother, the Catholic
church. They reorganized into a denomination that was just as powerful over
the people as the Catholic church used to be. They pulled out doctrinally,
but not organizationally.
I admire Luther and Calvin, but they never belonged to
a New Testament church. The New Testament churches never sprinkled babies.
The New Testament churches never had denominational bosses.
Something else happened. Over the centuries, these
denominations became more and more liberal. From these denominations we had
the twentieth century Reformation, or the American Reformation. This brought
about the inter-denominational movement. They came toward us, but
they did not come to us. We should not fight them, or criticize them,
but we should not unite with them either.
Here is what happened to the Baptists. They decided
they wanted to be educated. The independent Baptists had no schools, so we
sent our young people to be trained in the schools which were started by
those who came out of the Protestant movement and who started the
inter-denominationalist movement. They trained our
preachers in the doctrines and methods that they brought with them when they
split. When our preacher boys came out of their schools, they had learned
all about the universal church, formal services, robes, worship centers,
sanctuaries, anthems and classical music, ornate buildings, clergy titles,
union of church and state, and catechism.
All of these things came from the phenomenon of the
interdenominationalists. The Independent Baptists had few colleges until J.
Frank Norris started a school in Texas. Later, the Baptist Bible Fellowship
started a school in Springfield, Missouri, but Independent Baptists still
had no place to train their preachers.
I am not opposed to inter-denominational schools. I am
not opposed to a barber college, but it is not a good place for a Baptist
preacher to train. I am not opposed to medical school, but that is not a
good place for a Baptist preacher to train. I am not opposed to these Bible
colleges, but along with the truth they brought out of the Protestant
movement, they also brought much error. They brought the universal church.
They brought their formal worship services.
Two things happened when we sent them our preacher
boys there to get trained.
1. They received good Christian
training.
2. They did not receive good
church training.
You cannot divide the two. If the church was not
important, Jesus would not have started it. They received good training that
the blood of Jesus washes away our sin; they received good training in
walking with God; they received good training in prayer; they received
basically good training in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but they
received no training concerning the New Testament church; they received no
training concerning the ordinances of the New Testament church. They still
preached the Gospel, but did not believe in our Baptist heritage.
Tragically, in many cases, they "looked down their
noses" at the crude old-fashioned ways the Baptists did things. There are
hundreds of pastors in Baptist churches today who are not Baptists. Our
Baptist heritage has been diluted. Perhaps even more tragic is the fact that
all over the world there are preachers who were won to Christ by an old
fashioned Baptist missionary and then came to a inter-denominational college
in the United States to get their training. They have gone back to their
home countries and taken with them the inter-denominational teaching they
received here. They have taken back the formal worship services, the
doctrine of the universal church, the robes, the worship centers, the
anthems, etc.
A phenomenon has happened in our generation. We have
started our own Christian schools in Baptist churches. Thirty years ago you
barely could find a Baptist church that had a Christian day school. Now it
is difficult to find one that does not. There are thousands of Baptist
churches operating Christian day schools across America.
We have started our own Christian colleges in Baptist
churches.
Baptist colleges are being started all over America.
We no longer have to send our boys to be taught that there is such thing as
the invisible universal church, and to dress our choirs and preachers like
Catholics do. I am not angry at anybody with a robed choir, but they did not
get it from our Baptist history. They got it from the Catholics. Love them.
Pray for them. Thank God for them, but do not allow them to train our young
people. We are still Baptists. I thank God for the Gospel they preach, but I
am still a Baptist. America needs a soul-winning fundamental Baptist
church in every neighborhood.
There is still one danger. We must be careful that we
do not staff our faculties with teachers who have been trained by the very
institutions we are trying to avoid. In many of our churches we have already
allowed the inter-denominationalist to invade us through our schools.
It is also important that we continue to train our
preachers in colleges started and controlled by independent fundamental
Baptist churches. Divine perpetuity has been promised to the church, not
to the school. A school without the canopy of a church must die.
Now we have our own schools with our own teachers. In
the next few years something incredible is going to happen in America. There
is going to be a resurgence of real Baptists. We do not have to send our
students to the inter-denominationalists for training anymore.
We did not realize it, but for many years we have been
influenced by the Catholic church. From her came some harlots, and from
those harlots came people of conviction. Thank God for them, but although
they came toward us, they did not come to us. There is
something better, and that is the doctrine of local New Testament,
independent Baptist churches, who start their own schools, run their own
business, are bossed by nobody, but God Himself!
Chapter Twenty-
Three
What Is a Fundamental
Baptist Church?
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of
James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus
Christ, and called: Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
Beloved when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation,
it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should
earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained
to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into
lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude 1-4
The word fundamental is a relative word. It becomes an
adjective instead of a noun when it is used to describe a Baptist church. It
is a shame that we have to say fundamental Baptist church, because all
Baptist churches ought to be fundamental.
The word fundamental means,
one who holds to the original faith and practice of a
movement. A Masonic Lodge can have fundamentalists. If you go
back to the fundamentals of the Masonic Lodge, you are a fundamental Mason.
The word fundamentalist does not apply Just to a group of Baptists. It can
apply to any group. There are many kinds of religious fundamentalists, and
there are even many kinds of Christian fundamentalists.
The first Baptist church was started
in about 31 A.D.
It was not started on the day of Pentecost. It was
started during the earthly ministry of our Lord.
The Catholic church was started in
313 by
Constantine, the Emperor.
Constantine united the church and the state in the Roman Catholic
hierarchy.
In 1530 the Reformation came and the
Lutherans started. About the fourteenth century a man named John
Wycliff became very disenchanted with the Catholic church. Then came another
man named John Huss, who likewise was disenchanted with the Catholic church.
Following Huss came a man whose name was Savonarola. All three of these men
were martyred by the Catholic church. Then came a man named Zwingli, who was
also disenchanted. He became a part of the Reformation. Zwingli was followed
by Martin Luther, who was followed by John Calvin.
In 1531 the Episcopalian church
started.
In 1541 the Presbyterian church
started.
In 1602 the Congregational church
started.
In 1785 the Methodist church was
started by John Wesley.
In 1812 the Disciples of Christ were
started. We now call them the Church of Christ, Christian
churches, or Disciples of Christ.
Around 1900 the inter-denominational
movement began to flourish in America.
Remember that a fundamentalist is someone who goes
back to the original faith and practice of a movement. How far back does
someone have to go in order to be considered a fundamentalist? They must go
back to the origin of their movement.
To be a fundamentalist Methodist a person would have
to go back to 1785. A fundamental Methodist is not a fundamentalist as we
Baptists count a fundamentalist. They still sprinkle because John Wesley
sprinkled. They still believe in denominational lordship of the churches.
They still believe that salvation can be lost because John Wesley believed
it. They still believe in holiness. John Wesley was wrong on holiness. John
Wesley was a great man and certainly deserves our attention as a man of
character, discipline, and prayer, but not as a man of doctrine.
I believe we ought to pray for, love and admire people
of other denominations, who believe the Bible, but not doctrinally like we
do, but I do not think we ought to work with them. I think it is unwise to
work with people that are fundamental in their own doctrine.
When I was a young preacher, I pastored the Grange
Hall Baptist Church in the country, outside of Marshall, Texas. The Grange
Hall Methodist Church was a good Methodist church. They had a fundamental
Methodist preacher named Edmond Robb. He and I became good friends. Both of
us were in the same little country neighborhood. I respected Ed Robb and the
Grange Hall Methodist Church. We never had any trouble, because did not try
to unite in our efforts.
America was much better off when Baptists worked with
Baptists, Nazarenes worked with Nazarenes, and fundamental Presbyterians
worked with fundamental Presbyterians, etc. We do not reveal our differences
as much if we stay in our own camps and do our own work. We got the job done
better back in those days as well.
I admire the fundamental inter-denominational people.
I respect them, but I do not work with them. The Cumberland Presbyterian
Church was about a mile and half from our church. They had revivals just
like we did. They got people saved just like we did, but they sprinkled
babies and converts. Their denomination assigned the preacher to the
churches. I respected them, and I prayed for their revivals, but did not
unite with them.
Let's allow the fundamental Disciples of Christ, the
fundamental Methodists, the fundamental Congregationalists, and the
fundamental Presbyterians to live, but let us be fundamental Baptists. The
Baptist distinctives that have made us different through the years are no
longer precious because we have worked with good people whose doctrines were
wrong in some important areas.
There are those in the Lutheran church who have
returned to the fundamentals of the Lutheran church, but they are still
different from a fundamental Baptist in some important areas. They still
sprinkle babies. They still have the Bishopry over the churches. They are
totally wrong on the doctrines of the church, baptism, and the Lord's
Supper.
I respect and admire a fundamental Lutheran preacher.
I rejoice with him for his morals. I rejoice because he stands for
righteousness. I rejoice that he fights unrighteousness. I rejoice that he
has revivalsand gets people saved, but I cannot rejoice that he is wrong on
the local church. I cannot rejoice that he is wrong on baptism. I cannot
rejoice that he is wrong on sprinkling babies. I cannot rejoice that he is
wrong on the Lord's Supper. I can thank God for him, but I will not join up
with him.
To be a fundamental Baptist you must go back to Jesus.
Nobody is a true Bible fundamentalist unless he is a fundamental Baptist.
Nobody who sprinkles babies is a true fundamentalist because no babies were
sprinkled in the Bible. To be a true fundamentalist you cannot believe in
falling from grace, because the Bible teaches that you cannot fall from
grace. To be a true fundamentalist you must be separated from the world. To
be a true fundamentalist you must be a soul winner. You can be a fundamental
inter-denominationalist and not believe in soul winning, but you cannot be a
fundamental Baptist and not believe in soul winning.
A fundamental Baptist church is a church whose faith
and practice goes back to 31 A.D. to Jesus. You can be a fundamental
Methodist and go back to Wesley. You can be a fundamental Presbyterian and
go back to Calvin or Zwingli. You can be a fundamental Lutheran and go back
to Luther. You can be a fundamental Catholic and go back to Constantine, but
you cannot be a real Bible fundamentalist unless you go back to Jesus.
Two things cause these movements to
move away from the fundamentals.
1. Unwillingness to accept the
stigma of either extreme. Either position has a stigma. If a man
is a strict fundamentalist, the great host of society calls him a radical.
Most people do not want to be considered fanatical.
The evangelicals came along and taught fundamentalists
how not to be radical. The evangelical movement was not founded because of
conviction. It was founded because the evangelical people were not willing
to be branded for Jesus' sake. They did not want to bear the stigma.
The farther from fundamentalism the Devil can brand as
radical, the better he likes it. He likes it when more liberal Christians
are called fundamentalist because it moves the line of what a radical is
considered to be. If you are not a fighting fundamentalist, you are an
evangelical.
The neoorthodox movement is the same thing to
liberalism as the Evangelical movement is to fundamentalism. It is a way to
avoid being in the extreme of a movement.
In Washington, D.C. you will not find many old
fashioned conservative Republicans. Nor will you find many staunch liberals.
The same concept applies. Everyone wants to be moderate, so they will not be
considered radical.
The evangelical movement is nothing more than
fundamentalists who use liberal terms. The neoorthodox movement is nothing
more than liberals who use fundamentalist terms. New evangelicals are those
who meet somewhere in the middle.
2. A desire to gather a larger
following. Many people make the mistake of believing that they
will grow more by appealing to a wider scope of people. In reality, people
are drawn to that which is distinct. Most people hold to extreme beliefs and
are thrilled to find an institution that has not compromised those beliefs.
That has been the secret of the success of the First Baptist Church of
Hammond. We have done nothing to try to appeal to crowds other than
proclaiming the uncompromised truth of the Word of God.
Many men who had great and growing ministries saw the
opportunity to enlarge their outreach and changed their position more
towards the middle. In most cases the ministries diminished.
Let me make a few observations.
1. The Devil wants to bring the term
radical toward the center.
2. Let us thank God for every group
that broke with their original group when it got liberal and went back to
what it used to be.
3. Let us hold to our Baptist
distinctives. They do matter. Baptism does matter. It is in the
Great Commission. Soul winning does matter. It is in the Great Commission.
The Lord's Supper does matter. It is one of the church ordinances. It does
matter. The doctrine of the church does matter. Let us hold dear and
treasure our Baptist distinctives while at the same time admiring those who
are willing to take a stand in their denomination.
4. Let us not be ashamed of being
considered radicals.
5. We had a stronger nation
when each did its own work alone and the rest of us admired each other from
a distance. I am a Baptist. I thank God that I am a Baptist. I
thank God for my Baptist heritage. 1 thank God for Baptist distinctives. I
thank God for the men who died for them. If they can be martyred for these
Baptist distinctives, the least I can do is believe them.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
How the Wall of
Separation
Is Broken Down
But there were false prophets also among the
people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall
bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them and bring
upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious
ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of And through
covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose
judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth
not. II Peter 2:1-3
False prophets or false teachers are people who are
unsaved and are not teaching salvation by grace through faith. There are
three things about which we need to be right. According to the Old
Testament, the people were commanded not to mix one type of seed with
another seed, not to mix different cloth in the same garment, and not to
plow using an ox and an ass together. That was God's law of separation.
The ox and the ass represent the true preacher and the
false preacher.
The true seed represents the Word of God. We are
supposed to keep the Word of God pure.
Not using different material in one garment is
symbolic of salvation.
We need to be right on the man of God, the word of
God, and the plan of salvation. The false teachers mentioned in II Peter are
unsaved people who were trying to bring something other than the true Gospel
from the true Word of God.
The word privily means, to sneak in somebody
or something. It means that something is hiding behind something else in
order for it to also get in. In this passage we see that damnable heresy had
snuck in by hiding behind something that was not a damnable heresy. These
false prophets have a false doctrine they want to spread. They know we will
not accept it, so they hide that false doctrine behind one with which we do
agree.
For there are certain men who crept in unawares,
who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning
the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and
our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude 4
The phrase crept in unawares is used for two
things in the Bible.
1. It is used for masquerading. It is false teaching
being masqueraded.
2. It is used as entering in the side door.
This passage is talking about unsaved, false teachers
or prophets telling us that Jesus is not the Son of God, but not putting it
up front, or that the Bible is not the Word of God, but not putting it up
front.
And that because of false brethren unawares brought
in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ
Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage. Galatians 2:4
Our attention is turned in Galatians 2:4 from the
unsaved, false teacher to brethren. It says there are certain
brethren who have crept in. These are Christian people who have heresy
they are hiding behind some truth. They hook us to them with something with
which we agree and then we believe whatever they say. Radio and television
preachers are often guilty of this. They get us on a subject with which we
agree and we let down our guard. Then they teach their false teachings. I am
not referring to the basic doctrines, but all doctrine is important. The
doctrine of church is important. The doctrine of baptism is important.
If a person is wrong on baptism, that does not make
him a false prophet, but if he is wrong on baptism, we ought to beware of
his false doctrine. We ought not allow him to sneak in his false doctrine
behind those things upon which we do agree. This is the way churches change
and the way much of our Baptist heritage has been lost. I will give you a
perfect example.
Many false groups publish literature which often start
with something with which you can agree. It will talk about the
premillennial coming of Christ or the tribulation period. You will think
that it must be a good book because it sounds like they believe just like we
do. They get in on a doctrine with which you can agree, then you let your
guard down, and the false doctrine gets in.
This is what happens to churches. The new evangelicals
have many movements which are non-local church. Most of them would never
join an independent fundamental Baptist church. Most of them do not believe
in our convictions and standards. Most of them belong to denominations which
are opposite of all the things for which we stand. Most of them are not
interested in our informalism, our altar calls, our preaching, and our
old-time religion. They only build their works on other men's members.
They get on the radio and our members become their
listeners. They are parasites. They do not get people saved or build
churches. They do not believe that the local church is the only true church.
They call the true church the invisible or universal church. Most of them do
not belong to a red-hot, soul-winning, New Testament church, but they
parasite off of the soul-winning church to get prospects for their unique
ministry. They use issues with which our people agree to get to our people
to help them support their ministries. Let me give you an example of these
issues.
A preacher will get on the radio or television and
fight Communism. He does not believe like we believe, nor would he be a part
of our type of church, but he pulls us in on the one thing about which we
agree. We then become his followers. Once we have become his followers, we
become more loyal to him than to the local church pastor. This happens
because we do not see his faults. He does not live with us day after day. We
do not hear him preach several times a week.
I am sick and tired of the institution Jesus started
being considered a second-class institution. I am tired of men who do not
even go to a fundamental church becoming famous because of one issue. It is
the local church that is the hope of this country!
There is a preacher in America who is a member of a
denomination that has gone completely liberal. This preacher has gotten into
the hearts of independent fundamental Baptist people through his teaching on
the home. We all agree that American homes need to be improved. There is
nothing wrong with most of what he says, but the problem is that we become
his followers and put him above the local church pastor. He is a
neo-evangelical who belongs to a neoevangelical church and who is parasiting
off the local church.
That is what is happening to our churches. We are
falling for people because of one issue.
Many people spread false teaching by getting in the
side door of the Bible. For example, Bibles to Russia. I am not against
sending Bibles to Russia, but I am not for people sending Bibles to Russia
who would not cross the street and tell somebody about Jesus.
Many years ago I got hooked on a radio preacher. He
wrote and asked me to be on his board. Foolishly I wrote back and agreed to
do so. Somebody saw my name in his paper and wrote a letter to inform me
that he is charismatic. I did not know it because he never mentioned it, so
I called to ask him if it were true. He hedged a bit, but would not deny it,
so I resigned from his board.
Some of our heroes do not believe in our kind of
standards, our kind of convictions, our kind of old-fashioned, hell-fire and
damnation preaching, our kind of soul winning, our kind of altar calls, or
our kind of churches. We ought to send our money where they believe like we
believe and are doing what we are doing. Jesus started the New Testament
church, and we ought not support those ministries that ignore that church.
The King James issue is often used as something with
which we can agree in order to get you into a false doctrine. Not every man
who believes the King James Bible has been preserved word for word is a true
prophet. There is something just as important as agreeing with you on the
Bible.
Practicing the Bible is important too.
What should our attitude be about these people?
We should appreciate them for the good they do. We
should be kind to them, but we should commit our efforts to a soul-winning,
separatist, independent, Baptist church. The greatest youth programs in
America are being built by local churches. The greatest child evangelism
programs in America are being built by local churches. The greatest Jewish
evangelism programs in America are being built by local churches.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Sin of
Denominations
And after they had held their peace, James answered
saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon hath declared how God at
the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.
And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I
will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen
down; and I will build again the ruins thereof and I will set it up: That
the residue of men might seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles, upon whom
my name is called saith the Lord who doeth all these things. Known unto God
are all his works from the beginning of the world. Acts 15:13-18
I am going to explain why that denominationalism is
wrong. That does not mean that denominations do no good, nor does it mean
that there are not good people who are part of a denomination. I am sure
that denominations do some good, but that does not change the fact that they
are not a part of what God intended for the church.
There are four sins committed by denominationalism.
1. Denominationalism is a sin of
idolatry.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is
the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have
the preeminence. Colossians 1:18
Jesus is the head or the boss of the church. With that
in mind, let me make four observations.
(1) Jesus is the head of the church.
(2) Anything in His place is an
idol.
(3) There is no such thing as a good
denomination.
(4) When an outside influence
controls any segment of a church, it becomes an idol.
Consider some examples.
Literature. When
you control the literature of a church you pretty well control that church.
When a convention publishes its Sunday school literature, it is exerting
outside influence on the local churches and is doing what God is supposed to
do. That is one reason why I write all of the Sunday school lessons at the
First Baptist Church of Hammond. There is no place in the Bible where God
gives anybody outside of the church the right to exert authority over the
church.
Accreditation.
Nobody has a right to accredit the institution that Jesus heads.
Government. When
the Government supports a Christian school, the Government is not through
with that school. When the Government supports a church, they are not
through with that church. Once you have submitted yourself to outside
influence, you are in trouble. Every church is a local, individual,
autonomous, indigenous body. It is sin for anybody to control a New
Testament church from outside that church, including the government.
Missionaries. When
I was in the Southern Baptist Convention, we sent money to what they called
the Cooperative Program. That money was divided and distributed at
the discretion of the denominational bosses. They decide how much of that
money goes to questionable schools. They decide what missionaries to support
and how much to send those missionaries. The local churches have no say in
where the missionary money goes. When anybody outside the church tells the
church what to do, it ceases to be a New Testament Baptist church.
Ordination. It is
not a denomination's business to ordain our preachers. That is the local
church's job. Jesus is the head of the church. Anybody or anything that
comes in between the church and Jesus is taking His place and is guilty of
idolatry.
A pastor went to Portland, Oregon, area and bought
some property to build a denominational church. He refused to do everything
the denomination wanted, so they took his property. He raised that money.
They had nothing to do with it, but they took his property and he had to
move. He now is meeting in a rented building because an unscriptural
denomination took his property.
2. Denominationalism removes your
promise of divine perpetuity. Jesus said, . ..
upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it. God has promised that a local, New Testament,
independent, indigenous, Baptist church never has to die. We may
choose to die, but we do not have to die. If a school is not
started by a church, it does not have the promise of divine perpetuity. If
the church starts the school, then the school is under the church which is
under Jesus. Jesus promised divine perpetuity to the church, so if the
school is operated by the church, the school has a right to claim the
promise of divine perpetuity.
A school started by a group of churches does not have
that. When a group of churches start a school, a church is not operating
that school, so it does not have the promise of divine perpetuity. That is
given to the church. Anything that comes between Jesus and the church or
anything not under the canopy of the local church does not have God's
promise of divine perpetuity. I thank God that all across this nation
churches are starting Christian schools and colleges.
A denomination cannot start a New Testament church. If
a denomination starts a church, then that church is under the control of
that denomination. God does not promise divine perpetuity to a denomination.
The fact that the denomination starts the church means that they are
intervening and are the head of it. If they are the head, Jesus is not the
head. If a church is answerable to a denomination, it is not answerable only
to Jesus; consequently, it is not a true church and has no claim on divine
perpetuity.
3. Denominations cause the sin of
muzzling the ox.
Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of
double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the
scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.
And The labourer is worthy of his reward. Against an elder receive not an
accusation, but before two or three witnesses. I Timothy 5:17-19
Italy is a country with its own government. Inside
Italy there is the Vatican City which has its own government. That is a
perfect picture of a preacher and a church. The pastor rules that pulpit and
what is preached there. The people have the rule over the buildings
borrowing money, etc., but they have no vote about what goes on behind the
pulpit. If anybody gets inside that domain and takes over, they are guilty
of muzzling the ox. The Bible says that we are not supposed to muzzle the
ox.
No church flourishes unless the pastor rules that
little domain inside the big domain. The Bible says you are not supposed to
muzzle the ox. I am not the head of my church, but I am in charge of the
pulpit. I am under Christ in my pulpit, and we are all under Him as the
church. I have no power, but the power of influence. I stand up and preach,
trying to influence people as to how they should live, but I have no power
over them, nor do they have any power over my preaching. My empire is inside
the empire of the New Testament church. No church can be a New Testament
church if the ox is muzzled.
To belong to a denomination means that the
denomination ordains the preachers and gives them their papers. If they can
give them their papers, they can take away their papers, so the denomination
can decide at will if and when it wants to muzzle the ox.
4. Denominations cannot be of God
because the church cannot build it. The only thing that can be of
God in God's work is something which is built by a church. A church cannot
build a denomination. You cannot put a denomination under a church. The
church goes under the denomination. There are some things that a church does
not build, but do some good. The grocery store does much good, but the
grocery store cannot be promised divine perpetuity. The barber shop does
much good, but it is not promised divine perpetuity. A denomination may do
much good, but it is no better than a grocery store or barber shop as far as
God's promise of divine perpetuity is concerned. It must be under the canopy
of the church.
Chapter Twenty-Six
How the Devil
Removes Some
Landmarks
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark;
which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt
inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it.
Deuteronomy 19:14
I want to detail some of the wicked things on which
God has placed a curse.
Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of
the way. Deuteronomy 27:18a
Cursed be he that lieth with his father's wife;
because he uncovereth his father's skirt. Deuteronomy 27:20
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast.
Deuteronomy 27:2 1
The landmark was a piece of stone or metal that was
placed between the property of two people. They did not have sophisticated
ways of dividing property like we do today. The landmark was often moved,
but not quickly, nor very far. It was moved gradually, while no one watched,
or saw it, until finally property had been stolen.
Churches and schools do not decay immediately. It is a
little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, and a little bit the next day. I
want to explain how the Devil removes some landmarks.
I am not an intellectual, but I have made a study of
Christian schools. Before Hyles-Anderson College was founded, I made trips
to several cities for the purpose of finding what kind of institution the
good schools were when they were founded. I was concerned about our school
starting and staying right. I talked to people who were there when those
schools started. I talked to faculty members, students and graduates to find
out what they were like. I made a study of many of the older institutions. I
wanted to find out what made schools slide and what made colleges decay.
I am going to make some observations about these.
1. The local church has been given
the promise of divine perpetuity.
2. If the school is under the
church, then the school has a perfect right to claim the same promise.
3. It is the job of the church to
keep our schools straight.
How is that job to be carried out?
1. The preacher should always be the
overseer. Do not put an educator at the head of a Christian
school. Colleges die when educators lead them. There are many Christian
colleges that once had evangelists or pastors in charge, and when those men
resigned, they called a suave educator, and soon the fire was gone. A pastor
should be over the college and church, because the church must stay over the
college.
2. Lay people must continually help
police the institution. I tell our faculty members at
Hyles-Anderson College to let me know if changes are made at the college
that I do not know about. I am referring to things that are changing from
what they were meant to be. The pastor cannot be in all the classrooms. He
cannot be at all the meetings and athletic games. The lay people must help
him police the schools, so they do not change.
Let me show you what can happen.
In 1947, an inter-denominational seminary was founded.
In 1982, thirty-five years after it was founded, a poll was taken of their
students. Here are some of the shocking results.
* Fifty percent were tolerant of drinking alcohol.
* Fourteen percent believed there was a Hell.
* Fifteen percent of the students believed the Bible
to be infallible.
It does not have to happen, but can
happen at Hammond Baptist schools and Hyles-Anderson College or any
other Christian school or college.
Let me give you what my studies found. There are
eleven things that caused the destruction of a school under the canopy of a
church.
1. The church must not get tired of
being warned.
Everybody in the church must walk guard as a sentinel
around their schools, not to criticize, gossip, or to try to cause trouble,
but to let the preacher know when something is changing. You are not the
enforcer. That is the preacher's job. If the people try to enforce, the
school will die, but, if the Preacher does not know, the school will also
die.
2. We must reproduce ourselves.
Modern scholarship teaches that we must have a certain percentage
of teachers from other universities and colleges. You cannot be accredited
without doing that. At Hyles-Anderson College we are more interested in
hiring professors with the right philosophies than we are with ones with the
right credentials. A great pastor and the founder of a Bible college sat in
a restaurant with me one day and said, "Dr. Hyles, you are doing something I
wish I had done. I hired a music teacher who I thought was a good Christian.
I found out a few days ago, that at night he is playing in a dance band in
our city." He made the mistake of hiring by the world's standard of
qualifications rather than the qualifications of the right Biblical
philosophy.
Hyles-Anderson College has a unique purpose. No other
school has the exact same purpose. Nobody knows that purpose better
than the ones we have trained. Because of that, we usually hire our own. We
do not want to dilute our purpose with hiring people from schools that have
already decayed or are decaying. We will reproduce ourselves.
One of our administrators came rushing to me one day
and told me that a famous Bible scholar was interested in teaching at
HylesAnderson College. It was a man who at that time was probably one of the
most famous theologians in America. I said, "At HylesAnderson College, we
will not hire famous men, we will make famous men."
3. We must choose all faculty
members who have Bible training. Schools get the idea that an
English teacher has to know only
English to be an English teacher. That is not the
case. An English teacher in a Christian school needs to know the Bible as
well. Nobody who does not know the Bible well should teach science in a
Christian school. Nobody who does not know the Bible well should teach math
in a Christian school. Everyone who teaches in a Christian college ought to
know the Bible well enough to where he or she could teach Bible. It is not
Christian education unless every teacher is a Bible student.
4. We must avoid the centrist
position. As the theological winds blow, changes come in the
extreme positions. The centrist positions says that we will stay right in
the middle of the extremes. The centrist position says, "We will take a safe
position in between those extremes." An institution ought to decide where it
is going to stand. Every time the wind blows and somebody changes, we should
not change. Whatever clothing is right or wrong to wear is always right or
wrong to wear. If Hollywood was once wrong, it is still wrong. If the Bible
was once the Word of God, it is still the Word of God, and it will not
change. God is looking for people who will not change.
Our position must not be set with regard to others. We
must decide our own position. If certain standards are not popular and we
lose students, let us not change the standards. You do not grow by letting
down your standards; you grow by remaining faithful to your standards.
You should not try to be at any extreme.
You should stand where you are supposed to stand. Forty years ago, when I
started preaching, I was not very extreme. Today I am very extreme, but I
have not changed. The position of the extremes have changed making me more
extreme than I once was.
5. We must avoid searching
for the truth. We have already searched for the truth and found
it. I am not in a search to see if the Bible is the Word of God. I have
searched and found to my satisfaction that it is. It is not up for
reexamination. The doctrines I believe today, I believed forty years ago. I
decided then what I thought was right. I am not searching for the truth; I
am proclaiming the truth!
Modem education does not like absolutes. To it,
everything is relative. Our nation was built on absolutes. Every great
empire was built on absolutes, and every great church was built on
absolutes. When the absolutes leave, the growth also leaves.
6. Do not allow academic freedom.
A person should not have the freedom in an institution to teach
anything he believes. He should teach what that institution believes.
Institutions are built by the sacrifice of individuals who believed in
something enough to start the institution in order to perpetuate it. Some
professor who has never built anything should not be allowed to come in and
teach whatever he or she pleases.
7. Have no double standard between
students and faculty. The faculty members ought be as good soul
winners as the students are. The faculty members ought work as hard for
Jesus as the students do. The teachers and leaders ought to be the example
in involvement with the soul-winning ministry of the church. They ought to
build great bus routes and bring their converts down the aisles. They ought
to live by the same standards and convictions that the students do.
8. Every employed person in every
school ought to be involved actively in the work of the local church.
The church is more important than the school. When the church loses
control of the school, the school is gone. The Vice President of
HylesAnderson College has a bus route. That is the way that it always ought
to be. If the college withdraws its interest and activity in the church,
then the college is not a part of that which governs the church.
9. Student leadership destroys
colleges. Hyles-Anderson College has no student body president,
student body government, or student body newspaper. The heathen, wicked,
humanist institutions have campus newspapers that feel free to criticize and
rebuke their president or chancellor. They have articles that call for the
firing of certain faculty members. I do not believe in that for a Christian
school. I believe in administration government.
10. Keep the chapel hot.
Nothing will destroy the Christian school any faster than allowing the
chapel to lose its fervor and become a place of preaching style rather than
preaching power.
11. We must not let the standards
slip. When standards begin to slip, the school will begin to
slide away from the purpose for which it was founded. We must not let our
standards slip. If the student body decreases because of the standards, we
should still stay with the standards with which we started. Nobody is
supposed to decide our standards for us. I did not get in this business for
America to like me. I got in it because I thought we ought to take a stand
for what was right and against what was wrong.
In 1970 we started a school in an old dilapidated
building. Our church raised $65,000 cash, remodeled that building,
and started Hammond Baptist High School. The next year we started Hammond
Baptist Grade School. The next year Hyles-Anderson College was founded. If
we deteriorate as fast as the aforementioned seminary did, in fifteen more
years we will not believe the Bible is the Word of God, and we will not
believe in a Hell, and half of us will not believe that liquor is wrong!
Every school that has deteriorated did so by allowing
one or more of these eleven things to enter. We must guard the schools with
our lives for the sake of our children.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
The Financing of the
Church
Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye
say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed
with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all
the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and
prove me now herewith, saith theLORD of hosts, if I will not open you
the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be
room enough to receive it. Malachi 3:8-10
When the tithes are mentioned in the Bible, they are
sometimes called the tenth; sometimes they are called the firstfruits; and
sometimes they are called the tithes. Occasionally they are even called the
firstlings.
The life of Israel is basically divided into eight
definite sections of time. I want to cover those eight sections of time
going all the way to the New Jerusalem. There is something that each of
these ages has in common.
1. Patriarchal. This was
the time before the book of Exodus in the days of Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and
Abraham.
And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this
place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven. Genesis 28:17
And he called the name of that place Beth-el:
Genesis 28:18a
And this stone, which I have set for a pillar,
shall be God's house:
and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely
give the tenth unto thee.
Genesis 28:22
Jacob was at the house of God. Three times God's house
was mentioned. Jacob said, this is the House of God. Then he said,
I am going to call this place Beth-el, which means the house
of God. Then he said, this stone shall be God's house.
Three times Jacob brought the tithes to the house of God.
2. Wilderness. After they
left the land of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, they spent forty years
wandering in the wilderness.
The first of the firstfruits of thy land
thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD
thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
Exodus 23:19
The first of the first fruits of thy
land thou shalt bring unto the house of the
LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's
milk. Exodus 34:26
The Jews had started their journey toward the Promised
Land. They had crossed the Red Sea and were being given the law. Moses had
been to Mount Sinai, and the Ten Commandments had already been given. God
was telling them how they were to behave in the wilderness. For
the second time the house of God
is mentioned as the place where the tithes were to
be brought. While they were in the wilderness, they had the tabernacle
with them. They followed the tabernacle everywhere they went, and they were
told by God to bring the tithes into the house of God or that tabernacle.
3. The time of judges.
This was the time after they had left the wilderness and gone inside the
Promised Land. The first rulers were actually judges.
But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land
which the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest
from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; Then there
shall be a place which the LORD your God shall
choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye
bring all that I command you your
burnt-offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes and the heave-offerings of
your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the Lord.
Deuteronomy 12:10, 11
In the Book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites were
getting ready to go inside the Promised Land. God was giving them
instructions on what to do when they arrived. God told them that there
would be a place to put the tithes, and that place was the House of God.
4. The time of kings.
And Jehoash said to the priests, All the money
of the dedicated things that is brought into the house
of the LORD even the money of every one that
passeth the account, the money that every man is set at, and all the
money that cometh into any man's heart to bring into the house
o the Lord. II Kings 12:4
There again the money was to be brought into the house
of the Lord. In the first four eras of Jewish history they brought their
tithes to the house of God. In the time of the kings, the tithes were
brought to the house of the Lord. Notice that it repeatedly says to bring
the tithes, not to just send them.
5. The time of rebuilding.
This is when they came back from captivity in Babylon and rebuilt
the temple, the wall and the city.
And the priest the son of Aaron shall be with the
Levites, when the Levites take tithes: and theLevites shall bring
up the tithes of the tithes unto the
house of our God, to the chambers, into the treasure house.
Nehemiah 10:38
And I perceived that the portion oftheLevites had
not been given them:for theLevites and the singers, that did the work; were
fled every one to his field. Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why
is the house of Godforsaken? And I gathered them together, and
set them in their place. Then brought allJudah the
tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries.
Nehemiah 13:10-12.
The Jews were back from captivity, and God was
instructing them what to do about the money. The Levites were the preachers,
or those who worked at God's House. They were having to work in the fields
in order to make a living. They were supposed to live on the tithes of God's
people. Nehemiah said that the house of God was forsaken because the Levites
were working in the field. God told them to bring the tithes to
the house of God.
6. The post-rebuilding days.
This is the period of about four hundred years between the rebuilding of
Jerusalem and the coming of the Christ child in Bethlehem.
Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye
say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed
with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring
ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be
meat in house and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will
not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there
shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachi 3:8-10
God told them to bring the
tithes to His house. The house of God was not always the same. For a
time it was the altar. For a time it was the tabernacle. For a time it was
the temple. For a time it was a place called the tent of meeting. Wherever
the house of God was, that was where the tithes were to be brought.
7. The New Testament age.
I am going to skip this era for now and cover it later in this
chapter.
8. The millennium.
And the first of all the first fruits
of all things, and every oblation of all, of every sort of your oblations,
shall be the priest's: ye shall also give unto
the priest the first of your dough, that ye may cause the blessing to rest
in thine house. Ezekiel 44:30
.. and the
Sanctuary of the LORD shall be in the
midst thereof It shall be for the priests... Ezekiel 48:lOc,
11a
The last part of Ezekiel deals with the rebuilding of
the house of God in the kingdom age, or millennium. We will bring the tithes
in the millennium to the priest. The priest was at the sanctuary of the
house of God.
That takes the Jewish people all the way from the
patriarchs in Genesis, into the New Jerusalem. We have found that in every
era they brought the tithes to whatever was called the house of God at that
time. First it was the altar, then it was the house of God, then it was the
tabernacle, then it was the tent of meeting, then it was the temple, and in
the millennium it will be called the sanctuary of house of God.
Do you think that God would require His people in all
seven of these eras to bring the tithes to His house and then change His
mind in one New Testament era? God said, I am the Lord thy God, I
change not. The Bible says, in whom there is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning. The Bible says, Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday, today and forever. Consider...
...If He wanted Jacob to bring his tithes to the house
of God...
...If He wanted the Jews in the wilderness to bring
their tithes to the house of God...
...If He wanted the Israelites in Judges to bring
their tithes to the house of God...
...If He wanted the Jews under the kings to bring
their tithes to the house of God...
...If He wanted the Israelites when they returned from
captivity to bring their tithes to the house of God...
...If He wanted the Israelites during that silent
period of four hundred years to bring their tithes to the house of God...
...If He wants us in the millennium to bring our
tithes to the house of God.....
...Would you not think that He would also want us to
bring our tithes in this age to the house of God?
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye pay tithe ofmint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to
have done and not to leave the other undone. Matthew 23:23
Jesus said that tithing was not as important as mercy,
judgment, and faith, but He said we still ought to do it. He said,
these ought ye to have done. Tithing is a New Testament
principle. That is the only place Jesus ever spoke about tithing, but Jesus
did not have to say something twice to make it true. Jesus said we ought to
tithe...
Upon the first day of the week let every one of you
lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings
when I come. I Corinthians 16:2
This Scripture teaches proportionate giving. We are
supposed to give according as God has prospered us. If one person makes more
money than another, he is to give more money. The storehouse is the name
used here for the house of God... God always wants His people to bring the
tithes to the house of God...
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou
oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, I Timothy 3:15
The house of God today is the church. The church is a
called-out assembly. When God's people meet on the Lord's Day, that is a
church. Anywhere that a called-out assembly meets, that is the house of God.
Throughout history God always commanded His people to bring the tithes to
the house of God...
In the patriarchal days it was the altar. In Exodus 25
it became the tabernacle. With David and Solomon, it became the temple. In
the land of Canaan, it became the tent of meeting and later the rebuilt
temple. In the millennium it will again become the rebuilt temple. In this
age, the house of God is the called-out assembly. Every Sunday God's people
are supposed to take the first tenth of their income to the house of God.
The house of God is the church.
When God said, ye have robbed me in tithes and
offering, what did He mean? One tenth of our income is already God's. If
we do not put it in the church, we are robbing God. If we make a vow to a
building program, or vow to give God more than the ten percent, as soon as
we make that vow, the amount of that vow becomes God's, just like the ten
percent. We are robbing God if we do not give Him what is already His.
Ananias and Sapphira were killed because they had
promised God that they were going to give Him the selling price of some
property. Barnabas had done the same thing. He had sold a piece of property
and had given all the profit to God... They sold their property, but did not
give it all to God as they had vowed.
Let me go a step further. If you surrender your life
to full-time Christian service, your life becomes God's. You vowed your life
to serve God full time. Vows were very sacred in the Old Testament. At the
moment that vow is made, it becomes just as sacred as the tithes.
God will not allow us to live on more than ninety per
cent of our income. A tenth of it belongs to God. If you make a million
dollars a month, a hundred thousand dollars is supposed to go to the
church... You have no right to divide it up and designate it as you
choose... You are to give it to the regular offering of the church. There is
nothing wrong with giving designated gifts, if they are over and above the
tithes... There is no place in the Bible where any Christian designated the
tithe. They brought it to the house of God, and the house of God disbursed
it.
When I was ten years old, I got a newspaper route for
the Dallas Morning News... I had about thirty-five customers and made about
three dollars a week. I thank God that when I got those first three dollars,
my mother said, "All of that money is not yours." She took out three dimes
and said, "That belongs to God."
I said, "Why?"
She said, "Because we live on God's earth, drink God's
water, enjoy God's sunshine, and breathe God's air... That is rent."
Through the years there has not been one dime I have
ever made, without a penny of it going to the Lord, by way of the church
(the house of God for this day)...
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
The Task of the
Church
And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and
the LORD had blessedAbraham in all things. AndAbraham said unto his eldest
servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy
hand under my thigh: AndI will make thee swear by the LORD, the God of
heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my
son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell:
But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my
kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. Genesis 24:1-4
And the servant took ten camels of the camels of
his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand:
and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor... And he made
his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of
the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water. And he said, 0
LORD God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and
shew kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well of
water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: And
let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy
pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink; and I will
give thy camels drink; also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed
for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed
kindness unto my master. And it came to pass, before he had done speaking,
that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the
wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And
the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known
her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And
the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a little
water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink; my lord: and she hasted, and let
down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. And when she had done
giving him drink; she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until
they have done drinking. Genesis 24:10-19
Abraham told his servant to go to the far country of
Mesopotamia to choose a wife for his son, Isaac... He had to go several
hundred miles away and find the woman who was to be the bride of Isaac.
Notice what the servant did...
The servant got on his knees and asked God to help him
to find the one who was to be the wife of his master's son... In those days,
ladies came down to get the water... They brought bottles made of skins,
filled them with water, and carried them back on their heads. He was going
to ask the women coming for water to give him a drink of water. If one
offered water to his ten camels as well, she would be the one who was to be
the bride of Isaac. A camel drinks an enormous amount of water, so the lady
would have to go down to the well repeatedly in order to get enough water
for all of his camels. That was to be the way God showed the servant the
right bride for his master's son.
When the servant found her, he took out earrings and
gave them to Rebekah. He also gave her two bracelets and talked her into
coming back and marrying Isaac, sight unseen.
In this story ,Abraham is a type of God the Father...
The eldest servant is a type of the Holy Spirit. The wife is a type of all
Christians. Isaac is a type of Jesus. The far country, Abraham's home land,
is a type of the world.
The Heavenly Father told the Holy Spirit to go to the
world and get a bride for His Son. Everything the Holy Spirit is
commissioned to do in this age, is wrapped around getting a bride. The Holy
Spirit gives us gifts, but the gifts are to help us get the bride... The
Holy Spirit gives us the fruit of the Spirit, but the fruit of the Spirit is
to help us get the bride. The Holy Spirit comforts us, so we can be
comforted while we get people saved... The Holy Spirit strengthens us, so we
can get people saved...
The job of a Christian is soul winning. The consuming
passion for God's people should be to get people saved. Jesus went to a
great effort to get people saved. The Son of Man came to seek and save that
which was lost.
Charismatic people often make a drastic mistake. They
get more concerned about the comforting than they do about the purpose of
the comforting. They get more concerned about getting the gifts than they
are about getting the bride... Every child of God is supposed to get people
saved... That is the purpose of our existence. That is why we have the
church... That is to be the purpose of every ministry of the church...
Everything we do is to be wrapped up around getting the bride.
The servant gave her a bracelet and earrings. When the
Holy Spirit chooses a bride for Jesus, the first thing is to tell them how
to be saved. That is the earrings. The next thing is for them to reach out
and accept it by faith. That is the bracelet. A person is saved by hearing
and then taking.
In the Old Testament days, when priests were anointed,
oil was placed on the lobe of the right ear, on the thumb of the right hand,
and on the big toe of the right foot. The progression goes from hearing the
Gospel, to taking the Gospel, to spreading the Gospel...
The servant was nice, courteous, and friendly. We
should do the same, but our master did not tell us to go to the far country
and be friendly. He said to go to the far country and get a bride. Being
friendly is a tool to get the bride. We must talk people into marrying
somebody they have never seen...
In Bible, we have what we call the fruit of the
Spirit. Here is where Charismatic people get confused. They get the fruit of
the Spirit mixed up with the getting of the bride... They forget that the
purpose of the fruit of the Spirit is to help us in getting the bride. They
make the possession of these fruits an end in and of itself, rather than the
means to the end of getting a bride. We are supposed to be kind in order to
get the bride.
Some people like to talk about love, yet never or
seldom win souls to Christ. They are unfaithful servants. God did not send
them to the world to smile and be happy. God told them to be loving, kind,
peaceful, gracious and gentle in order to win more souls. The fruit of the
Spirit is simply a soul winning tool. It is a course on how to get the
bride.
Every gift of the Spirit is given for that one
purpose. If I talk in tongues and do not get the bride, I am an unfaithful
servant. If I heal forty people from thyroid trouble, and cast out thirty
tumors, but do not get the bride, I am an unfaithful servant. No matter how
much we get the gifts of the Spirit, if we are not winning souls, we are
unfaithful servants. The Holy Spirit came to this world to get a bride for
Jesus. That bride is to be composed of all believers at the rapture who will
be married to Him. The purpose of the fullness of the Holy Spirit is to get
the bride...
The servant did not talk about
himself. The servant talked about the son. When you get the Holy
Spirit, you love Jesus more... That is His purpose... The Holy Spirit's
purpose is not to be magnified, but to magnify Jesus. The servant praised
his master and praised the master's son.
When RebeKah agreed to go with the servant, it was a
picture of people accepting Jesus Christ as their Saviour. They like her are
agreeing to marry someone they have never seen. The purpose of every church
in America is to get the bride for Jesus. I do not care how rich a church
is, how many missionaries it sends out, or how much Bible the people know,
if it is not getting people saved, it is not right with God, and is not
doing what it is here to do. The one purpose for the servant going to the
far country was to get the bride.
I have more respect for a hard-boiled fundamental
soul-winner than I do for a sweet and kind compromiser. Being nice is
important, but not as important as getting the bride. I would rather see a
person do right wrongly, than wrong rightly. I would rather see a person
have the right position and the wrong disposition, than to have the right
disposition and the wrong position. The reason he sent the servant was to
get the bride...
The Charismatic movement is popular because it is
built around the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit, but not on the purpose
of the Spirit. It is built around the tools to get the bride and not on the
getting of the bride. The job of the servant is to get the bride. Without
the servant, we are in trouble. The father sent the servant, just like the
Holy Spirit was sent by the Heavenly Father, to find a bride for the son.
Rebekah had a long journey ahead... They were going to
go through some pretty dangerous and lonely places. Rebekah did not know the
way to the son, but the servant did. His job was to lead her safely to the
bridegroom. He knew every spot between them and the son. The secret was for
her to follow and obey him...
That is what we must do to be happy as Christians.
Between the time that we receive Christ as Saviour, and the time when we
meet Him face to face, we must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and to tell
us what we ought to do.
Imagine the journey Rebeka took in order to get to
Isaac. Sometimes the journey went down into the valley and was foggy and
dangerous... The secret was to follow the servant. Sometimes they had
battles... Sometimes wild animals came. Often they could hear the hissing of
serpents... Her only hope was to follow the servant. His job was to get the
bride safely to the bridegroom. Sometimes the journey was crooked, and
sometimes the journey was straight.
We do not know the journey to Heaven God wants us to
take... We must simply follow the Holy Spirit.
One day, they got close... Isaac had come out to kneel
and pray, and they got a glimpse of him. When they got close enough, the
servant introduced her to Isaac, his master's son. The Bible says
Isaac took her to his tent. What happened to the servant? He drifted away
into the shadows because his job was done. It was his job to get the bride
for the groom...
That is my job... The Holy Spirit lives and dwells in
me, so it is my job to get the bride for the groom. For these many years, I
have spent my life trying to get the bride to the groom. At the rapture, all
the people I have won to Christ will get their first glimpse of Jesus, and I
will get to see them meet the one I told them about.
It will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.
Life's trials will seem so small, when we see Christ.
One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase.
So bravely run the race till we see Christ.
The tragedy is that many of the churches in America
today have either forgotten the servant altogether or misinterpreted the
purpose of the servant. Most Christians do not understand the purpose of the
Holy Spirit. I believe in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, but the reason I
believe in the fullness of the Holy Spirit is to get the bride for the
Groom. I believe in the fruit of the Spirit, but all of those are simply
tools to go soul winning. I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, but the
gifts of the Spirit are simply ways to get the bride.
The earrings and bracelets were simply tools to get
her... We ought to teach our children to be kind to one another. Why?
Because the kinder they are, the more souls they can win. We should have
love because the more love we have the more folks we can get to the Saviour.
Ours is an impossible task, humanly speaking. How can
I possibly convince somebody who has never seen Jesus to put his faith in
Him! The servant does it with love and with the gifts. Many go to church to
shout, not to see people saved. My Bible says they that sow in tears shall
reap in joy. You do not sow in joy, you sow in tears... They that sow in
tears shall reap in joy.
She goes to Isaac, and the servant steps back into the
shadows.
The joy of getting the groom and the bride together is
all the servant needs. That is the job of the Holy Spirit, and that is the
job of the church.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
A Shrewd Way the
Devil
Takes Over a Church
To every thing there is a season, a time to every
purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a
time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep,
and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast
away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a
time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to
keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend and a time to sew; a time to
keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a
time of war, and a time of peace... Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Every one of these things mentioned is neither good or
bad. All of these things can be bad and all of these things can be good. In
this is the secret to success and happiness in life.
If you want to build a great church, or if you want to
have a happy life, do not do the same thing all the time, but do the same
things all the time. You will never find a more important philosophical
statement than that.
Monotony is both depressing and exhilarating. If you
are monotonous in doing the same thing all the time, you will become
depressed... If you are monotonous in doing the same things all the time,
you will find it exhilarating.
Life is that way. You cannot live on a peak all the
time. You must come down into the valley. The valleys are just as important
as the peaks. A church needs to have services where the people shout and
praise God. It also needs to have services where the people are still and
know that He is God. Taking the Lord's Supper in quietness and sweetness is
just as important as shouting and praising God.
I sometimes preach on Sunday mornings on comfort
because people must be comforted... You cannot compare a sermon on comfort
with a sermon on praise and rejoicing. You cannot compare either of those
with a Bible study...
The same applies to Bible truth. This is how churches
start teaching false doctrine. A pastor finds a truth in the Bible that the
people have never heard. The people think that it was wonderful, so he has
obligated himself to find a deeper truth the next time. Before
long he is finding things in the Bible that are not there because he is
trying to find something new and fresh all the time...
I will not build a church that way. I will build a
church on the solid basics of the Bible. The same thing that builds
families, builds churches. The basics... The way you stay healthy is by
eating the basics.
There are churches that have to find something
shocking as far as the truth is concerned. After a while they are spending
all of their time trying to force types and truths that are not really
there... If they do not continue to find new and more shocking truth, the
feeling or effectiveness begins to wear off.
You cannot build a church, a life, a family, or a
relationship on one thing all of the time. God is a God of variety. That is
one thing wrong with rock music... Rock music is not a music of variety. It
uses the same beat over and over again. Good music is a variety of music in
one song. Churches are destroyed because they go down a good road, but only
down that one road. They are destroyed by the continuous repetition of
something that is good...
Some churches are destroyed by spectacular events. You
cannot have a big day every Sunday and you cannot build on the spectacular.
A church should never get off onto any one thing. For
example, we had 5,195 people saved on a Sunday. That is not going to happen
every Sunday. There must be times when we study the Bible. Every Sunday
cannot be a big Sunday.
The same thing is true in a family... There are times
you should take the children for ice cream and times you must make them eat
their spinach. There are times to go to the park and swing, and times to
bend them over your knee and spank them. There must be a balance of good
things.
Jesus told Timothy to preach the Word. Many people
believe that is all we are ever supposed to do, but that is not all it says.
It also says to rebuke, reprove, and exhort. There are four things
mentioned, and preaching the Word is just one of them. God is saying that
sometimes the pastor needs to teach the Bible verse by verse. Other times
the pastor needs to exhort as to how to live. Sometimes the pastor is to
preach the Devil out of us. That is what a church needs... Churches will
self-destruct when they get wrapped up in only one thing...
I am a very happy man. I live by the same schedule
every week. It is not monotonous. Doing one thing all the time is
monotonous, but doing several things all the time is not monotonous. I do
not have to go on vacation to be happy. I do not need a hobby for a
diversion... The truth is I live on vacation all the time... Vacation is a
change or a diversion.
The professional golfer golfs for a living, but plays
tennis for vacation. The professional tennis player plays tennis for a
living and plays golf for a vacation... My whole life is one diversion after
another. That is why I am happy and can preach several times a day. I live a
life of diversion... I do many things all the time, but not the same thing
all of the time...
The Bible says there is a time to love and a time to
hate. So we need to love a while and hate awhile... Billy Sunday said, "You
cannot love flowers if you do not hate weeds..." A doctor cannot love health
if he does not hate germs... There must be times when the pastor praises God
for His wonderful love, but there must also be times when he preaches
against the dirty liquor traffic; against the wickedness in Hollywood, etc..
All over the country there are people gathering in
living rooms for cottage prayer meetings and Bible studies. They have no
evangelism, they have no invitation, they are not getting anybody baptized,
and they have no house-to-house soul winning, street preaching, or passing
out of tracts... They just go deeper and deeper in the Word until they are
teaching things that God does not even know... They are destroying a church
by seeking truth...
There are churches that take all their time to
be still and know that He is God...
There are preachers who get off into casting out
demons, and the people begin to come to church expecting to see the
spectacular. If the spectacular does not happen, they quit coming.
I know churches that are one issue-oriented. They will
get on an issue and stay on it for six months or more at a time... Every
sermon and Bible study is wrapped around that issue. That is why I seldom
use spectacular sermon titles. Everything about the Bible is spectacular. I
want to build in my people a desire for the basics of the Bible, not just
the spectacular.
It is tragic when a church calls a man to be their
pastor after hearing him preach only one Sunday, because they fail to
discover if he is an issue oriented preacher. Before calling a pastor, the
church should get the man's tapes and find out if his preaching over an
extended period of time is balanced. Somebody asked me who I thought was the
greatest preacher in America. I would have to hear him preach for a year
before I could answer that.
Let me make three observations.
1. Come expecting something, but do
not come expecting any one thing.
2. Do not make anything be in
competition with itself.
I know people who get hooked on one food and just eat
it all of the time. I know people who get hooked on one hobby and stay on
that one hobby all of the time. There are too many things in life to
enjoy... Sometimes you should go bowling, but sometimes you should just take
a walk in the woods. Happy people are the diversified people. Live a varied
life.
3. Do not go down just one road.
Do not do the same thing, but do the same things.
Our preacher boys often go to a new church and for
their first month there preach a series of sermons on women wearing pants. I
do not mention women wearing pants all the time... I may go many months and
never mention anything about women wearing pants.
My critics take one little phase of my ministry and
talk about it as though that were the whole of it. Most of them have never
set foot inside the buildings of First Baptist Church. If there is a church
in the world that has a varied ministry, it is First Baptist Church of
Hammond, Indiana. That is the way to keep a church healthy.
A college can get off onto a few doctrines. I believe
the King James Bible was preserved word for word, but if I preached on that
subject every week to the college students, I would destroy the college.
That is what the Devil does. The Devil comes to a
church and gets the pastor and the people enraptured about one thing. My
soul hungers for my church to be thrilled and excited when people get saved,
but I also want them to be able to sit at the Lord's Supper table with
sincere praise and worship to Almighty God... There is a time for both.
There is a time to laugh, and a time to cry, a time to plant, and a time to
reap, a time to love, and a time to hate.
Churches all over this nation have gotten caught up in
trying to find some new revelation from the Bible and destroyed themselves.
People need a well rounded diet to be well rounded people. We need to stick
to what the Bible says. The Bible says we are supposed to pray. The Bible
says we are supposed to live a clean life... The Bible says we
are supposed to read the Bible. The Bible says we are supposed to go soul
winning... The Bible says we are supposed to walk with God... Often that
does that not satisfy us because we have gone down one road. That one road
excites us until every time we meet we have to exceed where we went the last
time.
In life it will not work, and in a church it will not
work. It creates a church that only knows one thing and gives us only one
phase of the ministry we are supposed to have to God. The Bible talks about
ministering unto God. That is our purpose. God wants us to shout and praise
Him... God wants us to spend some time quietly with Him and express to Him
our love... God wants us to go out and tell people about Him and get them
saved... God wants us to learn about Him from His Book... That is what makes
a great Christian, and that is what makes a great church.
Chapter Thirty
When the New
Testament
Church Started
And he goeth up unto a mountain, and calleth unto
him whom he would: and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve, that they
should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, And to have
power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils. And the multitude cometh
together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his
friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is
beside himself Mark 3:13-15
This is where I think the New Testament church was
started. Jesus was in the mountain and called to Himself those He wanted.
This was the first called-out assembly by our Lord. There, He ordained the
twelve to go out and spread the Gospel.
The church had to be founded sometime before Matthew
18 because it talks about the church. It also had to have been started
before Acts 2 because the Bible says that they were adding to the church
those that were being saved. You cannot add to something unless that
something already exists.
Three things have distinguished the New Testament
church down through the centuries since this time that Jesus called out
these people.
1. Believer's baptism.
Very few churches, other than Baptists, believe in salvation by grace,
security of the believer, and baptizing only believers. Believer's baptism
has been the issue that Baptists have fought for more than anything else
through the years.
2. The independent congregation.
No denominational boss has any scriptural right to tell a local
New Testament church what to do, or to interfere with its business. It is
difficult to even find a denomination that believes correctly on all of the
important issues. All denominations interfere from the outside. They ordain
preachers, and that is not the job of a denomination. The local church is
supposed to ordain preachers. These denominations will also try to take away
the credentials of those who do not follow their guidelines. That is
control.
3. The doctrine of the local,
visible church, not the doctrine of the universal church.
These are the things our forefathers fought for the
most. They are also the things that I am fighting for across America.
Somehow we must get back to placing the importance on these issues.
There are also other things that are important
characteristics of a local New Testament church. Let me go into some detail
on these.
1. It must be founded by Christ.
Methodist churches were founded by John Wesley. Presbyterian
churches were founded by John Calvin. Lutheran churches were founded by
Martin Luther. Baptists are the only ones who can trace their origin all the
way back to the time Christ first gathered together that called-out group on
the hill.
2. There must be two ordinances.
The Lord's Supper is a church ordinance and is supposed to be
observed by a church. The ordinance of the Lord's Supper was started as a
church ordinance. It always has been and it always will be an ordinance of
the local church. It is a memorial supper when we gather and remember the
blood and broken body of our Lord.
Baptism by immersion is the other ordinance. Nobody is
a fundamentalist who sprinkles babies or adults.
3. You must have only two church
offices. There is nothing in the Bible about a Flower Committee.
There is nothing in the Bible about a Music Committee. There is nothing in
the Bible about a Board of Trustees. There are only two offices. One is
pastor, or it is sometimes referred to as bishop or elder. The other office
is that of deacons.
4. There is to be no outside
control. No church can be a New Testament church unless it takes
care of its own business with no interfering from the outside. A church
cannot be a New Testament church who assigns the pastors. Any church that
allows any outside control whether that control be good or bad is negating
its right to be called a New Testament church.
5. It must have the proper
order of membership.
Then they that gladly received his word were
baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand
souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Acts 2:41
They baptized these converts the same day they were
saved. Many churches criticize those of us who believe this way; yet it is a
distinct characteristic of a New Testament church. They got baptized the
same day, joined the church the same day, and began taking the Lord Supper.
This is the order for church membership: Salvation -Baptism
- Church Membership - Lord's
Supper. Any deviation from that order forfeits the right to be called a New
Testament church.
And as they went on their way, they came unto a
certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me
to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart,
thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down
both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.
Acts 8:36-38
Philip said that all the Ethiopian eunuch had to do to
get baptized was to believe. He did not have to appear before a committee.
He simply had to believe and he was able to be baptized on the spot. To be a
New Testament church, you must baptize converts immediately.
6. The Bible is the final authority.
No church is a New Testament church that does not believe in the
verbal inspiration of the Bible.
7. Soul winning is essential.
You cannot have a New Testament church and not be a soul-winning church.
The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in
my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the
angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest
are the seven churches. Revelation 1:20
A golden candlestick is another word for a church.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
repent, and do the first works: Revelation 2:5a
The first works Jesus told the New Testament church to
do was to go soul winning. Jesus was telling this church that if they did
not get back to soul winning, He was going to remove their right to be
called a church. That is the church's first and foremost responsibility. The
church is not a social club. It is a soul-winning station. The New Testament
church was hated by Jerusalem and was persecuted because they were soul
winning. There is no such thing as a church that is not a soul-winning
church. You may call it a church, but it is not a church. Jesus does not
recognize any church as a church unless it is a soul-winning church.
9. Salvation is by grace through
faith only.
10. Biblical separation.
No organization that is not Biblically separated is a church. Our founding
fathers were separated people. They were a persecuted, hated, and fanatical
people. There are three areas in which we are to separate ourselves.
In the Old Testament, they could not plant two seeds
together in the same mound; they could not plow with an ox and a donkey in
the same yoke; and they could not have two different materials in the same
garment. These things symbolize several areas of separation.
1. The Bible. The
seed is the Word of God. We are not to yoke up with any denomination,
church, meeting, fellowship, or endeavor that is wrong on the Bible. We are
not to yoke up with people who do not believe the Bible is verbally
inspired.
2. Salvation. A
robe is the symbol of salvation. We are not to yoke up with people who are
wrong on salvation. We are not to yoke up in any kind of meeting with people
who are wrong on salvation.
3. The preacher.
An ox is a symbol of a true preacher. The false preacher is symbolized by a
donkey. We are so afraid of not being accepted. New Testament Christianity
never has been accepted. A big battle in fundamentalism in the next few
years is mainly going to be the compromiser attacking the separatist. When
one starts that battle, he moves outside the circumference of
fundamentalism.
There are some wonderful Christian people who belong
to churches that are not New Testament churches, but this issue is a big
one. We must teach our people the importance of belonging to a true New
Testament church.
Acts 20:28 says, Take heed therefore unto
yourselves.., to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his
own blood. Jesus loved the New Testament church enough to purchase it
with His own blood, so we ought to love it enough to belong to one that is a
true New Testament church. God has formed the New Testament church as His
unit of operation. It is His company; His squad; His platoon; His unit of
battle; His unit of action; His base of fellowship. God organized it and
wants His people to come out from among the false churches or any church
that unites with the false churches.
I thank God that I belong to a New Testament church,
the kind that has fought to exist through the years, and the kind that Jesus
founded.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Church and
Education
According to the
Bible
It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with
him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with
him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth
faithful: he cannot deny himself Of these things put them in remembrance,
charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit,
but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to shew thyself approved unto
God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of
truth. II Timothy 2:11-15
I want the First Baptist Church to be ready to stand
when the battles come in the future. The battle will come concerning the
schools. We are very fortunate to live in the State of Indiana because we
have had very few battles, but the battle is eventually going to come.
Preachers all over this nation are going to face it.
The big battle is this: Is the
school a part of the church?
The courts are going to have to
decide whether or not education is worship. A church worship
service cannot be licensed by a state. The question is whether or not
education is worship. I am going to explain from the Bible that education is
worship.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour
cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem,
worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship:
for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father
seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4:21-24
Jesus said of His people that they knew what they
worshipped. They learned what they worshipped because they were taught what
they worshipped. This woman was a heathen worshipper and did not know what
she was worshipping because all pagan worship is built on ignorance. All
true worship is built on knowledge. Knowledge is education. To get knowledge
you must have a teacher and a student. Consequently, true worship is based
on knowledge. False worship is based on ignorance. The most ignorant and
primitive places in the world worship heathen, pagan gods because they know
not what they worship.
Truth is education. Jesus said that we are not to
worship Him ignorantly, but in spirit and in truth. Truth must be
transferred. People who know the truth have been taught the truth. If you
have not been taught the truth, you cannot worship God. Jesus said I am
the way, the truth, and the life. You must be taught the truth, so real
worship is based on being taught. I worship Him in truth because I was
taught truth as a child. If our next generation worships God in truth, they
will do so because they are taught the truth. You get error by accident, but
you get truth on purpose.
You cannot worship God ignorantly. You must worship
Him in truth. Truth must be conveyed. Truth must have a teacher and a pupil
and a truth being conveyed from one to the other.
If Jesus is the truth and we are supposed to worship
God in spirit and in truth, then mathematics, history, geography, science,
and languages are all truth. If Jesus is the truth, then God's people should
be in search constantly of all truth, including these things.
And these words, which I command thee this day,
shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6:6
We are commanded to talk about Him when we walk by the
way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. That means that we are to teach
our children the truth every day, not just one day a week. Our government,
judges, and many state legislatures say that we worship only on Sunday
morning, so they will not license Sunday morning worship. The Bible says
that we must know the truth before we can worship, and we are to teach the
truth to young people every day. That means that God told us not to confine
teaching the truth to Sunday.
Let me give you some observations.
1. God must be worshipped in truth.
The average person goes to church on Sunday without thinking
about God all week. He takes one little hour to hear a few dead songs and a
sermonette by a gown-wearing preacher. That is called worship. The Bible
says we are to spend every day learning who He is, what He is, and where He
is.
You cannot learn about God unless you know
mathematics, because God is truth. You cannot learn about God unless you
know history, because history is truth and God is truth. True worship must
be built on truth. Truth is teaching. Teaching is education. If we teach our
children at home seven days a week, we can come to church on Sunday morning
and worship the true and the living God in spirit and in truth, because we
spend all week teaching them truth and Sunday worshipping in truth.
2. Truth must come before true
worship. You cannot worship God ignorantly. The Bible says that
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.
3. Truth comes by learning, which is
education.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:
because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou
shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I
will also forget thy children. Hosea 4:6
People are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.
Children do not get the truth in the public schools. One of these days
America is going to be enslaved because we do not know the truth. The
Christian school movement in America is facing the fight of its life in the
not too distant future. Churches like First Baptist Church of Hammond will
have to lead the fight. Most denominational and inter-denominational
churches will allow their schools to be licensed.
4. Education is preparation for true
worship.
5. Worship not based on truth
is false worship.
Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lust of
your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not
in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he
speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. John 8:44
Satan is the father of lies. He is also the father of
ignorance?. Jesus is the truth. The Devil abides not in the truth, because
there is no truth in him. Truth comes through proper education. Truth is
conveyed from one person who knows it to a person who does not know it.
There was a day when I did not know that two plus two equal four. I learned
that from a teacher, and now I know that truth. It is important to know that
truth because it is mathematics and God is a God of mathematics. Christian
education is better than public education because it is based on truth.
6. All worship is of God or Satan.
You either worship the true and living God or you worship the
Devil. There is no other ground. If you worship the truth, you worship God.
If you worship a lie, or error, you worship the Devil. That means the
liberal people worship the Devil because they educate their children at the
feet of error rather than truth.. If they do not believe that Jesus is God's
Son, they worship the Devil. If they do not believe that Jesus is virgin
born, they worship the Devil. If they do not believe the Bible is the Word
of God, they worship the Devil. You either worship in truth, the Living God,
or in error, the Devil.
7. Education is a part of
worship. I would like to plead this in court and take this before
the Supreme Court. There is no true education without the fear of God. I am
talking about science. I am talking about history that honors the father of
our country. All truth is a part of God, whether it be mathematical truth,
Bible truth, historical truth, language truth, or geography truth. God is
the One Who made the universe, so to understand the universe we must
understand God. If we do not know the truth, we cannot worship God. If we
love God and want to worship God, we ought to be interested in all of His
creation. The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of God and the
firmament showeth His handiwork. We cannot know God unless we look at His
heavens and consider the work of His hands. God speaks to us through the
heavens, so education is worship.
8. In the Bible worship was not
limited to Sundays.
Acts 5:42 says that they taught the truth daily in the
temple and in every house. Our government is trying to confine it to a
little one-hour period of worship. They try to tell us what worship is, yet
they do not even know God. It is going to take more than thirty minutes a
week to learn all the truth God has for us to learn. When we education our
own children, we are preparing them for worship.
9. To say that a church should not
teach math, history, etc. is to say that God has no interest in those
subjects. God does have an interest in history. God does have an
interest in math. God does have an interest in language. God does have an
interest in geography. He is truth, and all truth is a part of God.
10. This is the way America was at
first. The public school system was not
the way America started. It was an afterthought. The educational
system of the United States of America was started by the churches, and that
is where it should be. Churches should educate their own. It is not the
government's job to educate. The school system of America was founded by the
church. That is our heritage and that is the way it should still be.
Let me give you another view.
1. We worship a teacher.
There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus,
a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him,
Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: John 3:1, 2a
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Matthew 28:19
2. We are to teach what He taught.
Jesus, our teacher, goes back to Heaven and commissions us to
teach what He taught. I am commanded by Jesus to teach what he taught. The
reason I teach what He taught is so I can properly worship.
3. If He commanded me to do it, what
right does the State have to give me permission? I have already
been commanded by Him to do it, so I do not need permission from the
government. It is not the state's business to give us permission to worship.
Nobody in the state says they will try to license our worship service, but
they will try to license our school. The school is where we teach the truth
necessary for worship.
Let me tell you what is going on.
1. The state is trying to limit
worship to Sunday.
2. Some states are trying to
limit worship to Sunday morning.
3. Some states are even to what
they call sanctuary worship. In some states they are trying
to prove that Sunday school must be licensed because it is not worship.
4. Only worship will not be
controlled by the govern-ment.
You cannot worship unless you know the truth, so we learn the
truth in order to worship God. That makes the Christian school as much a
part of worship as the Sunday morning service. It is an extension of what
goes on then. It is as much a part of the church as the Sunday school.
5. Anything that is not called
worship as they see worship, will be licensed. The day will
come when we will be forced to decide whether or not we are going to allow
the state to tell us what to do in our schools. John Bunyan was in the
Bedford jail for twelve years because the state wanted to give him a license
and he would not accept it.
When we refuse to accept their license they will try
to approve our teachers. They will approve only teachers who meet their
educational requirements, which will be worldly, godless, humanist courses
taught at state universities.
I like what Moses said to Pharaoh. Pharaoh told him
not to go, but to stay and worship in the land.
Moses told him that they were leaving and going to
Canaan.
Pharaoh said not to go very far away.
Moses told him that they were going all the way to
Canaan.
Pharaoh told him to at least leave the children there
because it might be dangerous out in the wilderness.
Moses told him that everybody was going to go.
Pharaoh suggested that they leave the cattle there.
Moses told him that not one hoof would be left!
The state is going to tell us that we have to be
licensed. When we fight it, this is what they will do to try to get us to
compromise. We must be determined not to allow one hoof to be placed under
the control of the state!
1. Hire state approved teachers.
No, we will not do this.
2. Christian Schools can appoint
an accreditation board of their own. The idea is not who
licenses or accredits you, the idea is any outside accreditation. The local
church is an indigenous, autonomous, independent institution. A group of
preachers have no more right to tell us how to operate our Christian schools
than a group of congressmen do!
3. Send us a list of your
teachers. Even this is too much control because it is NONE of
the government's business who teaches in our Sunday school or in our daily
school.
The battleground of the near future will be whether or
not education is a part of our worship. The Bible says education is
necessary to worship. In order to worship properly on Sunday, we must teach
our children the truth every day. The truth is what makes me free and the
truth is what makes me worship God, for they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Why Biblically the
State Cannot Control the Church
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they
might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples
with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest
the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regard
est not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it
lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? But Jesus perceived their
wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute
money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he said unto them, Whose is
this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he
unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and
unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard these words, they
marveled, and left him, and went their way. Matthew 22:15-22
Human law was begun of necessity. Men had to protect
three things.
1) their person
2) their property
3) their freedom
Government was started for those three things.
Government was founded to be a servant of the people. The state has the
authority to control only whatever threatens one of these three things. The
state, however, has often become the agency that takes away our person,
property, and freedom. Now, we must be protected from that which was made to
protect us.
There are different powers. When the Bible says that
we are to be subject to the higher powers, it is not suggesting that we be
subject to just one of them. It is saying that we are to be subject to all
of the higher powers. We are to obey the higher powers in the proper
proportion of their power. Our first allegiance is to God. Our second
allegiance is to our country, then to our state, our county, and our city.
They are all higher powers, but they are not equal powers.
God was here first, so He established the first laws.
Any law that a nation makes that contradicts God's law is wrong and does not
have to be obeyed. Any law that a state makes that contradicts God's law or
a nation's law does not have to be obeyed. Our first allegiance is to be to
the highest power. God has the first right to our person, our property, and
our freedom.
I want to make three observations.
1. Caesar has no right to put his
image or superscription of ownership on anything that belongs to God.
God created the heavens and the earth. So God has the
right to choose what He wants. Consequently, that which belongs to God is
totally outside of the rights of Caesar or the state. The state has no power
whatsoever to put its stamp of ownership on what belongs to God.
(1) The church belongs to God.
Caesar has no right to put any stamp of approval upon a
church, because the church belongs to God. The church is a part of another
kingdom. In Acts 20:28, Paul told the Ephesian elders to take heed that they
feed the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. Jesus
purchased the church, so it belongs to Him and not the state. He has first
rights. That means that the nation, the state, the county and the city have
no right to give anything the right to exist that belongs to God. God
already has established its right to exist.
Since the church belongs to God, the government has no
right to require the church or any part of the church to have a permit or a
license. A Christian school does not have to have permission from the
government to exist. God's power supersedes the state's power. A preacher
does not need to have a license from the state to preach. The church does
not belong to the United States government. As long as a church is not
endangering anybody's person, property or freedom, the state has no power
over it.
(2) The body belongs to God.
Paul said that the body and the spirit belongs to God. My
body belongs to God. I Corinthians 6:18 says that our bodies are the temple
of the Holy Spirit. We are bought with a price and we are to glorify God in
our bodies. My body does not belong to the state. It belongs to God. The
state has no right to tell my body what to do, unless it injures somebody
else's body. As long as I am not endangering another's property, person or
freedom, then the state has no authority, because that is the government's
only intended purpose.
(3) The spirit belongs to God.
The spirit is that which fellowships with God. My body is
that which you see. My soul is that which fellowships with you. My spirit is
that which fellowships with God. My spirit is God's. The state has no
control over my spirit. I can worship God as I choose. That is not the
state's business. I can worship God according to the dictates of my own
conscience and as I see the word of God.
(4) The soul belongs to God.
The soul is that with which we fellowship and learn. That means
our minds belong to God, so the state is not supposed to educate us. God
never intended for the state or the government to educate our young people.
Before there ever was a nation, God owned our minds.
(5) The tithe belongs to God.
Leviticus 27:30 says the tithe is the Lord's. God is supposed
to get the first of your increase and of your income. Caesar cannot place
his stamp of ownership on what belongs to God.
2. Caesar cannot tax what is God's.
The church is financed by the tithes of God's people. The church
should not be taxed, because it would be the tithe being taxed, and
Leviticus 27:30 says, the tithe is the Lord's. The government would
be taxing God. The state has no right to tax the church, because the church
is operated by the tithe, which is the Lord's. If the state taxes the
church, the state is taxing God. That would be like the state of Indiana
trying to tax the United States Government. The United States cannot tax
God, because the inferior power cannot tax the superior power. Jehovah God
is a higher power than the United States Government, so it has no right to
tax the church.
3. Caesar cannot pass a law in
conflict with God's. If a city passes a law that the Supreme
Court does not like, it will not be a law. The Supreme Court of the United
States can nullify a law passed by a city council because it is a higher
power. The Supreme Court can also nullify a law passed by the state of
Indiana or even one by the Congress of the United States. But the Supreme
Court cannot nullify a law passed by Jehovah God. Consequently, a nation
cannot pass a law in conflict with God's law. God's law came first.
A nation can pass no law conflicting with God's law. A
state can pass no law conflicting with a nation's law. A city can pass no
law conflicting with a state's law. If the city conflicts with the state,
you should obey the state because the state is a higher power than the city.
If a nation's law conflicts with God's law, we are to obey God because He is
the higher power. We do not have a license to live above the law of the
land, but whenever a law of God conflicts with the law of the land, God's
law supersedes the law of the land.
4. We do not always have to
obey man's laws.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and
they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. Romans 13:1, 2
That word subject is a military word. In the
military an individual is to obey according to the rank of the officer. The
higher the rank, the more the priority there is to obey the order. Daniel
prayed with his window open every day. They passed a law he could not do
that. Daniel kept on doing it because he was obeying the law of God instead
of the law of man. We are to obey God, who has revealed His will in His
Word. The state has no right to pass a law that is in conflict with God's
law. It is important to remember that it must be something that He has
divinely commanded in His Word.
And when they had brought them, they set them
before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we
straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye
have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's
blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We
ought to obey God rather than men. Acts 5:27-29
God's kingdom is superior to the United States of
America. We have a right to go soul winning without the permission of the
city council. We have permission from a bigger source than City Hall. As
long as what we do does not threaten another person's person, property, or
freedom, we have the right and the obligation to obey the law of God over
the law of man.
We are not of this world. Our kingdom is above this
world. As we interact with this world, we must see to it that we submit
ourselves to the laws, even if we do not agree with them, as long as they
are not against the laws of God. Whenever one power conflicts with another
power, our allegiance is to the highest of the two, which means whenever any
power conflicts with God's laws, our allegiance is always supposed to be to
God!
Chapter
Thirty-Three
The Church and
Government
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government andpeace there shall be
no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to
establish it with judgment and with justice henceforth even for ever. The
zeal oftheLORD of hosts will perform this. Isaiah 9:6, 7
When Jesus comes, all human government will rest upon
His shoulder and will flow from His authority. Government will increase
until the millennium comes, so the millennium will be the perfect time when
all government is under Him. During the kingdom age, the throne in Jerusalem
shall become all the government. All cities will get their right from the
throne of David, from Jesus on the throne. At that time the government shall
be upon His shoulder.
In Romans we have a prophesy concerning the
deterioration of a civilization. It also describes the deterioration of the
fundamental Gospel position before it is forsaken by God. Three times in the
first chapter of Romans we find words like, God gave
them up, or God gave them
over. There comes a time in a country, in a
civilization, or in a movement when God gives it up. I want you to notice
the stages in this deterioration as they apply to fundamental churches.
1. They hold the truth, but they
hold it in unrighteousness.
For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness. Romans 1:18
The first step down for any great movement is when it
loses its separation. Its doctrine is sound, but it is not separated from
the world. I do not care what group, denomination, or movement it is, the
first step down is losing its separation position. Many once great churches
are no longer effective for God because they quit taking a stand on the
matter of separation.
There was the day when Germany was basically a
Christian nation. There was a day when England was the headquarters of
fundamental Christianity in the world. There was a day when Chicago,
Illinois, was the fundamental headquarters of the United States. What
happened? They held the truth, but they lost their position of separation.
That began their downward slide. They began to live like the world, talk
like the world, dress like the world, sing like the world, walk like the
world, watch what the world watched, and go where the world went. The great
soul-winning churches in history have been the greatest separated churches
in history. Their first step down was when they lost their separation.
2. They lose their shout.
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful; Romans 1:21a
The Bible says that they glorified Him not as God.
What does it mean? They lost their shout. The churches in America that have
joy and excitement are usually separated. The quickest way to lose your joy
in the Lord is to lose your desire to be separated.
3. They lose their gratitude to God.
The Bible says that we are to enter into His courts
with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. When we lose our praise,
we will lose our thanksgiving. That is always the next step down.
4. Their foolish heart is darkened.
... . but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1 :21b
It does not say that their foolish mind was
darkened. It was their foolish heart that was darkened. They still believe
the Bible, but they lose their emotion. They lose their tears. It is sad
that even in fundamental circles a separated and excited church is an
unusual thing. Some of the deadest churches in America are independent
Baptist churches. Why? They lost their separatist position. When you lose
your distinctiveness, then you lose your shout, and your thankfulness, and
your heart becomes darkened.
5. They begin to think that
they are wise.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools. Romans 1:22
That is why our schools change. Usually that is the
next thing that happens. We decide that we want our schools to become like
the heathen schools that we once shunned. We want to use the same textbooks
that they use. Man becomes wise and God becomes a fool.
6. They become humanistic.
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into
an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts,
and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through
the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between
themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
Romans 1:23-25
That is humanism. Humanism is when a man thinks he
knows more than the Bible. Humanism is when man becomes more important than
God. Humanism is when man reasons with himself. That is what formal
education often becomes. Nobody knows the truth, but we are all searching
for it. That is what modern education teaches. They fight dogmatism and any
kind of authority because they do not want to yield themselves to the
authority of an omnipotent God.
7. They become immoral.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile
affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which
is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the
woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that
which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their
error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which
are not convenient. Romans 1:26-28
That term reprobate mind means that
the mind has gone as rotten as it can go. It means that God has
given it up. God will give up the civilization or movement that does not
take a stand against immorality. Many churches no longer are a lighthouse
for the Gospel because they have lost all semblance of righteousness and
accepted the filth of this world. That is why some denominations that once
stood for the truths of God's Word now openly accept the homosexual
lifestyle.
8. They worship government.
The Bible says that they worshipped and served the
creature more than the Creator. That is interesting. They worshipped and
served the creature. That is government. The last step in the decay is when
we come to a point where we hold government in higher regard than we do God.
Many churches once held the aim of pleasing God as their goal, but now are
so busy trying to please the government that they no longer give God any
authority. God, not government, is to be the final authority of the church.
With that in mind, let's consider the matter of
authority as it deals with the church. Authority may be claimed by three
sources.
1. By strength. When the
conqueror conquers, he has authority over the conquered. That is the wrong
way to get authority.
2. By surrender of the weak to the
strong. Let me illustrate this. Lithuania never chose to be a
part of Russia. Lithuania had no choice. Stalin and Russia got power over
Lithuania by strength. Strength conquered weakness and that gave authority.
In contrast, Texas was also a foreign country. Texas, by treaty, decided to
enter into the Union, so Texas voluntarily entered into our country.
Lithuania did not voluntarily enter into Russia.
3. Delegated by God.
There are four areas where God has delegated authority.
(1) God has given authority to
the family to rule itself. The Bible has given the husband
the authority over the wife. The Bible also has given the parents the
authority over the children. The little unit, called the family, has been
given the right by God to rule itself.
(2) God has given authority to
the local church to rule itself. The family has no right to
rule the church. The church has no right to rule the family. The church has
been given the authority by God to govern itself.
(3) God has given business the
right to govern itself.
Free enterprise is God's gift. Capitalism is God's
gift. It is God's way.
(4) God has given authority to
the State. When I refer to the state I am referring to
Government as a whole. God has given to the state the authority to govern
itself.
God gave the authority to each of these and none of
them has a right to usurp that authority. They are not over each other. They
are separate from each other. The state has no authority when a parent is
obeying God by spanking his child because God has given the family the right
to govern itself. God said to spank our children. That command has been
given to the family. The state has no right to prevent the family from
obeying commands given by God to the mom and dad.
The church has no right to control the state. The
church has no right to control business. Each of these are separate
entities.
The state has no right to control business. That is
what is called the free enterprise system. That is America. When America was
founded, the Government did not interfere with business. Business has a way
of settling its own problems if it is left alone.
For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our
lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us. Isaiah 33:22
Every local church is supposed to govern itself. There
is no great centralized church power. In America, our judges and politicians
are basically not church-going people, so they do not understand the church.
The state has no right to interfere with the way we serve our God.
There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to
destroy: who art thou that judgest another? James 4:12
A lawgiver is one who gives government the right to
exist. A lawgiver is one who gives the home the right to govern itself. God
is that lawgiver.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Romans 13:1
God gave the state the right to exist. God gave the
home the right to exist. God gave the church the right to exist. God gave
business the right to exist. All of these are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth
the ordinance of God. Romansl3:2a
If the state resists the power that God has given to
the church, they are resisting God. The state is resisting God when it tries
to run the home. There is nothing in this country more corrupt than the
Welfare Department. They think they own our kids. God has given parents the
right to own those kids.
When our son was in Junior High School, he brought
home a book the school was requiring him to read. The name of the book was
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. I told him to tell the
teacher that he could not read the book. His teacher gave him a substitute
book to read called, Catcher in the Rye. I told him that he could not
read it either. The next day I went to the principal's office to inform him
that my son was not going to read those books.
The principal had me meet with the English committee
to come to a satisfactory resolution. I told that committee that my son was
not going to read those books. That principal said something to me that I
have never forgotten. He said, "Reverend Hyles, when your boy is in our
school, he is no longer your boy."
Before I knew it, I was across his desk and had that
principal by his collar. I said, "I do not care where he is, he is still my
son, not yours!"
That is the attitude of the state. The issue is one
kingdom trying to operate another kingdom. God has given each kingdom a
right to exist independent of the others. God gives each of these
institutions the right to exist.
God is the lawgiver. If the government gives these
institutions the right to exist, than the government becomes the lawgiver
and has taken the place of God. So, the government become an idol. God is
the One who gives the right to the state. God puts up kings and sets down
kings.
If any of these four rises up here to give any of the
other four the right to exist, it become a lawgiver takes God's place. They
make themselves an idol. Not only that, for us to submit to them, makes us
idolaters.
If the government tries to get us to license the
church, the government has moved itself where God is supposed to be, so a
church that allows itself to be licensed by the state is idolatrous, because
they have another god. It is not the state that gives the First Baptist
Church the right to exist. It is God Who gives the First Baptist Church the
right to exist.
We are to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Truth is
education. If we do not educate and teach the truth, we cannot worship.
Truth must be taught, so we are to teach our people five days a week at our
schools. The state has no power over the school, because the school is a
part of our worship and a part of the church. If the state says that our
school must be licensed, it has usurped the place where God is supposed to
be. The state becomes the lawgiver, giving us the right to exist. The state
becomes an idol.
If you try to start a church in many communities in
America, you will be told what street you must start it on, how big a sign
you can have, and how many parking places you must have per pew. That is the
state controlling the church.
God is the lawgiver who gives each of those areas the
right to exist and the right not to interfere with any of the others. The
state has no right to give a Christian college the right to exist. Many of
our colleges are in trouble because they are not controlled by a church,
which takes away its right to claim autonomous authority. They do not have
the canopy of the local church. They have formed an empire, or a kingdom,
outside the four kingdoms God ordained.
The First Baptist Church of Hammond and every other
church should determine that no one will give us the right to exist. We
already have our right to exist given to us by the only Lawgiver in the
universe. So let us be free. It is a matter of being scriptural.
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