An Honest Basic Assessment of Independent Baptists, pt. 4

The labels or designations for churches could be reduced to something like "the church," and that would exclude almost no one.  "The Church of Christ" denomination makes a big deal about the name, as if not having the right name alone disqualifies a church.  If you know Baptist history, you know that "Baptist" isn't a name that New Testament churches gave themselves.  They were most differentiated by their separatism from the state church and their immersion of believers, distinct from the sprinkling of infants.  Roman Catholicism and Protestants both saw these independents as different and labeled them based upon what distinguished them.  All of these Bible believing and practicing churches would have been independent and Baptist in that sense especially.

Independent Baptist churches decided to organize into associations and fellowships and conventions. Many stayed independent of these groups, but then many others later separated to independence once again for the sake of purity.  However, every church, as we read in scripture, must take responsibility for its own purity through discipline and separation, because of the world, the flesh, and the devil, prone to move away from the straight belief and practice of the truth.

In this series, I offer an honest basic assessment of how independent Baptists have strayed the most. In the last post, I started the first one, that is, the....

PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL

By Preaching a False Gospel

I believe most independent Baptist churches now preach a false gospel, and when I say most, I mean over 50%.  Almost all of these are the revivalist churches, which I believe outnumber all other independent Baptist churches, and these pervert the gospel mainly in their false teaching and belief about repentance.  To do this, they have twisted numbers of salvation passages, turning those biblical texts that teach the gospel into something post-salvation, Christian living, or practical sanctification.

Some of these churches say repentance is post-justification (even though you'll rarely hear them use the word "justification" -- they think it is after salvation).  Repentance to them is a doctrine for believers.   To them, believers repent, people already saved, not unbelievers.  They see repentance as a post-salvation work for believers.

Others misdefine repentance, essentially dumb it down, so that it isn't even repentance any more.  The life of the "repentant one" won't necessarily change, because it is an intellectual repentance, merely a change of mind.  It really is a game its adherents play.   Most of these say that an unbeliever repents of his unbelief.  He wasn't believing before, but now he is believing, so he has repented of unbelief -- that is repentance.

I've also heard the following.  A person who repents is willing to change, so those with this view say the will is involved -- yes, the will is involved.  He wants to change, but he won't necessarily change, so if he doesn't change, he still repented, because he wanted to change.  The point here, however, is that someone who wants to change, the one who believes and repents, will change.  If he doesn't change, then he didn't want to change, so he didn't repent.  This post and series is not to lay out all the doctrine and the answers to every one of problems -- I'm just reporting, folks.

All of the above are about a perversion of repentance, but that is one side of the equation.  Those wrong about repentance are wrong on the other side of the equation too.  They minimize Who Jesus is.  They believe He is Savior.  They believe that He is God, the Second Person of the Trinity, to a certain extent.  I think they diminish Deity of Christ with their exclusion of the Lordship of Christ.  You can't stay in rebellion against Jesus and actually believe in Him.  I'm saying they don't believe in Him either, minus His reign.  Jesus said, "Repent for the kingdom is at hand," and the kingdom was at hand, because the King, Jesus was there.  The above leave that out to various degrees.

How did the above happen?  The purpose again of this post and series isn't about how or why so much, but I will give a small summary of my assessment here.  Quite a few factors came together into a poisonous elixir.   Some relate to the distortion of Keswick Theology, Finney, Moody, Torrey, Scofield, Scofield's Reference Bible, early ecumenical evangelism, Dallas Theological Seminary, then Rice, the Sword of the Lord, and then Hyles.  These influences spread to independent Baptists through their colleges and conferences.   An undermining theological problem mixed with bad church growth methodology.   They lowered the bar of salvation until it wasn't salvation.  More got "saved," but they were receiving the placebo.  The distortion multiplied and continues to this day with numerous false teachers.

Of course, out of all the above has come very emotional altar calls and manipulation and then other very strange perversions, like 1-2-3 pray with me, easy prayerism, and "soul winning" where the winners come back with 50 to 100 saved.  After that, whole strategies were developed to get them into the tank.  Evangelicals have had their own offshoot of this and I see them all as dovetailing in all sorts of corruption in evangelicalism and fundamentalism.

By Not Separating from a False Gospel

Some have been in hell for decades now, who prayed prayers led by the above "evangelists."  We can't say bad enough things about all of it, and yet many put up with it for years and still do.  I believe that the people who don't say anything about these people, who allow it by their associations and accommodation, help spread it.

Before I delve into the lack of separation, you should know that I'm not saying the lack of separation equals preaching the false gospel.  This is not a moral equivalency there.  I'm explaining why the perversion of the gospel abounds among independent Baptists.  Neither should you conclude that independent Baptists are worse than evangelicals on this.  This is all over in evangelicalism and fundamentalism, but I'm narrowing it out of love to independent Baptists, and I am an independent Baptist.

I went to Maranatha for college and grad school, and I put Maranatha on the BJU side, the non-revivalist side of independent Baptists.  I would think they're happy with that.  However, when I was there for many years, because my family moved to Watertown, Wisconsin when I was 12 years old, Maranatha brought in Jack Hyles every year.  He preached something different than what I thought was right, but it was very confusing, because they first had John R. Rice and then Jack Hyles every year.  Many Maranatha grads went the Hyles route.  Bob Jones University had Hyles in too.  The present president of BJU, Steve Pettit, served at a Hyles church for awhile and early in evangelism, he encouraged a pastor I know very well to be like that, to take on those characteristics.

Both Bob Jones and Maranatha, and most fundamental Baptists, used Neighborhood Bible Time, that taught a false gospel.  I'm not saying that there weren't some saved under the influence of Charles Homscher and NBT, but many preachers learned their craft through the manipulation of that program.  They took on the same characteristics in their churches.  Many BJU and Maranatha pastors went to pastor's school in Hammond, Indiana.  This was like a pilgrimage to Mecca.  I can tell you that I never heard any sermon repudiating the doctrine of Jack Hyles at Maranatha.  Kids loved him.  None, the entire time I was there said anything officially against him.  That includes men like Larry Oats.

I remember attending the Wisconsin State Youth Conclave and then working in it, and we had Jack Hyles.  I remember standing at the front when kids were streaming forward, and because I didn't move up fast enough to meet them as they walked to the front, Hyles yelled at me to step forward as part of the invitation philosophy.  It was all part of his strategy, that was laid out in one of his manuals.

There is a lot of confusion out there, because you've got this same doctrine spread all over the place.  I mentioned in the last post the big independent Baptist meeting in Arizona.  One of the speakers is Clarence Sexton.  If you look at Clarence Sexton's page at the Crown College website, you don't see repudiation of all these shenanigans, but exaltation of them, including the Curtis Hutson center for local church ministry, who wrote the book against repentance for salvation.   Bob Jones University just had Sexton.  What is the dialogue with him all about?

At Clarence Sexton's Baptist Friends conference, he had Jack Schaap, Jack Trieber, and then president of the FBFI, John Vaughn. There has for a long time been an acceptance of all of this among both sides of independent Baptists, in that men don't separate over it.  And this is with separation being a common emphasis among independent Baptists.  Separation, separation, separation, and then no separation over a false gospel?  Is the Bible the basis for this separation teaching, or is it independent Baptist politics?

You see strange partnerships everywhere and this adds to more confusion.  John Goetsch is at West Coast and at Camp Joy.  Do the churches that attend that camp think that the West Coast gospel is their gospel?  That is very strange to me.  As an aside, does the Camp Joy music camp like the West Coast music?  Why is that ignored?  Isn't that false worship?  Does worship relate to the gospel?  Of course it does (John 4:23-24; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18).

I would be remiss if I didn't mention unaffiliateds.  There is an unaffiliated college, at least I think it claims to be unaffiliated, Master's Baptist College and Fargo Baptist Church (look under North Dakota), and yet this church and school bring in for its main conference speaker for its college days this year in September -- this is a big deal -- R. B. Ouellette and David Gibbs.  These are Hyles people.   Also, if you look at their promotional materials, they are full of Hyles supporters.  These men never repudiated Hyles's message.  They were right with him.  If you listen to Ouellette preach, he sounds just like Jack Hyles.  I've written about Ouellette and his views on repentance here before (here and then here).  If you treat this like it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter.

Look at Old Testament Israel.  Israel became what it allowed.  Israel didn't start believing wrong. First, they allowed wrong teaching and practice.  Then they did it.  Then it was who they were. Finally, they persecuted the true prophets.  I don't want to have anything to do with someone who doesn't preach a true gospel.

Methods That Obviously Distort the Gospel

Some say they teach repentance, but they bring in one to two thousand on the bus every week.  By the time these kids get to 8th grade, most of them dropped out, but they all made professions of faith, and were all "saved."  They were lured in with gimmicks, made professions, were even baptized, but they completely turn away from the Lord, and are still out there professing to be saved.  They think what they did at those churches was enough for them.  Even if these churches say they are right on repentance, they can't be.  They're preaching something wrong.  They're practicing wrong.  I could go more in depth about this and tell you how they're wrong in the doctrine, but they are.

I don't think someone should treat churches that use the above methods like they are preaching a true gospel to these kids.  They should treat them like they are distorting the gospel.  By ignoring it, the gospel keeps getting perverted.  They should lose fellowship for what they are doing.  It not only is ruining those children and the workers, who think that is the work of the Lord, but it then spreads everywhere else as a method, because people won't say it's wrong.  They treat it like it is a secondary issue, not worth separating over, when it is a gospel issue.

Part of why I am writing this is to teach.  Another is to warn.  I also want to make it clear where I stand.  I am not with the people who teach and preach a false gospel.  I wish you would join me.  I'm afraid that today people do not care.  I am barely scratching the surface above.  I could say much more and it is already very long for a blog post.  There are men on the FBFI boards that do exactly what I've written about here, so this is mixed in all over the place.

I stop at independent Baptist churches now and then on vacation and it's easy to see that they are proud of their Bible version and their dress standards, but they preach a horrible gospel.   On a few occasions, the best I could do was attend an evangelical church, non-denominational, instead of the independent Baptist church, for many reasons, but because at least the evangelical church preached a true gospel.  I'm not in fellowship with something like that, but it was the best I could do.  I try not to do this and am not planning to do it in the future, but it's happened.  I don't think you're justified for joining one of these other churches just because so many independent Baptists are like this.  But folks, the Mormons use the King James Version.   Independent Baptists, you've got to change on this! You've got to change! You've got to change!  Please change!

More to Come.