Keswick Preaching and then Practical Perversion: the Unaffiliated

Because I'm leaving town here Wednesday until next Monday, while getting my classes and other responsibilities ready for when I'm gone, I listened to the audio from a recent unaffiliated Baptist conference.  At this juncture, I don't want to go into what  or where the conference was or its characters.  This is not supposed to be a guess'em game either.  I listened to four sermons.  Three of them were very good.  Very.  Those three, I have to admit, I picked out because I thought they would be good, so that's not a very scientific sample (not to the level of quackery though).  I talked to someone who attended the conference, and he said the preaching was good at the conference.  Good doesn't mean, "every sermon good," but "higher percentage good than normal for one of these conferences."

A fourth sermon was laced with Keswick.  I don't know if this preacher even knows it.  I'm guessing the Keswick theology he believes, right now he's sold on it, and thinks it's the answer or solution for everyone to hear.  Of great interest to me was that one of the four sermons, preached before the fourth, dealt head-on, smack-dab, bullseye with the Keswick sermon.  If it had followed the Keswick sermon, it could have been pulverizing it with its content.  It was so right on that it looked planned, purposeful, like someone who was dealing with something he knew was coming in advance.  I know it wasn't, but it was greatly needed, and I appreciated it.

Someone preached a sermon that was smashing Keswick before someone came along and preached just the opposite.  What I'm saying is that two different theologies were being preached in two of the four sermons I heard.  From the sounds of the crowd, both were being given big "amens," even while they contradicted one another.  Some, I'm sure, did not know they were listening to sermons that were diametrically opposed to one another.  If there was hearty, audible support for the first one, the second one should have received crickets.  It didn't.

The man crushing Keswick even mentioned Keswick theology.  I haven't talked to anyone about a particular sermon at the conference.  All I heard was that in a very general way that the sermons were overall very good.  However, I know this man, just from hearing the preaching, is concerned about the perverse Keswick teaching, and was eviscerating it.  Then came along a man later and preached just the opposite.

That the man preached against Keswick theology -- that should happen.  That two men could contradict each other in the same conference on something so vital -- that should be very rare.  It's something unaffiliated men need to talk about.  They need to get settled what is their thinking about these doctrines.

I'm going to call the fourth man, Keswick Man.  The other I'm calling Sufficient Man.

The style of Keswick Man was a Keswick style.  I can handle yelling.  I can even enjoy some, if it is within the context of an authentic communication of the text of scripture.  This was a lot of yelling of the nature of performance art.  It's actually a kind of "art of preaching," that I've written about, that people think is endued in some way because of the style of delivery.

The sermon of Keswick Man drew from the passage to which he referred.  He didn't preach the passage.  He launched from the passage into some practice, some of which he read into the text. One of the other four sermons was a sermon from Nehemiah on preaching from the Bible, moving into a biblical theology of preaching.  It was a terrific short presentation.  That sermon came ahead of Keswick Man, and exposed his preaching as well.  Part of Keswick preaching is a dependence on the Holy Spirit for the sermon that circumvents the authority of scripture.  You are hearing the effects of a mystical experience, understood as being key to the process of preparation.

I will not divulge the theme of Keswick Man's message or even what Testament to which he referred. However, Keswick Men bring a tension that comes from not having arrived at sufficiency in Christ. They do not rest in the grace of God.  I'm not endorsing quietism, but I'm referring to a pursuit of greater blessing that takes the form of non-stop pressure.  This is revivalism.  They push and push to get there, and that desperation displayed itself throughout the message.  They've got to make it happen, producing the tension in many aspects of sanctification.

Keswick Man spoke of a person in his life that he's been working and working on.  This is what it takes with Keswick -- lots of work.  It's you working.  This is not to say that you don't work.  However, Sufficient Man stressed it was God that was working.  We work out, because God is working in.

Sufficient Man preached on a theme again I won't say, but is the antidote for Keswick thinking and belief.  He emphasized that the justified person was already complete.  This person has all that he needs.  He knows it is all grace, so he enjoys obedience and whatever results it brings, because He depends on God -- actually depends on God.  Keswick is faux dependence on God.

One of Keswick Man's points was, "Don't be afraid to ask for miracles."  Some might think that's a rather innocuous or innocent point.  Should believers be praying for miracles?  He followed with "I've got to see God do stuff."  There were many "amens."  Maybe he was joking, but he said, "I even had a miracle this morning," before telling a story of avoiding a traffic ticket.  He reiterated, "Don't be afraid to ask for miracles."  For the third time, he said, "Don't be afraid to ask for miracles."  That was the central point of the sermon.  He related the reception of the miracles to a "secret place" and "power."  He said that they're miracles, and because they are, you won't see them all the time, or they wouldn't be miracles.  Actually, Jesus saw them all the time.  During eras of miracles, they occurred all the time.  That's actually what we should expect if were to expect them.

I'm sure Keswick Man believes that he'll receive miracles.  He was probably taught that.   He might think he's received them and that others should too.  Believers are not to pray for miracles. The Greek word for "miracles" is semeion, also translated "signs."  It's the same word.  "Signs" and "wonders" are "miracles."  This is sheer continuationism.  Jesus said in Matthew 16:4 among other occasions, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it."

Jesus said, "Don't seek miracles," so don't pray for miracles.  Someone shouldn't ask for miracles. Who would ask for miracles?  The religious leaders did.  People who ask for miracles are wicked and adulterous.  Why?  God has done enough.  If Jesus says you are wicked and adulterous for seeking after miracles, then you should be afraid to ask for miracles.  Was this challenged by the unaffiliated Baptist preachers?  Or are they really fine with continuationism?  It should be shocking for them to hear what he said.

Believers don't need miracles.  They have all the power they will ever get at the moment they are justified.  They have every spiritual blessing.  They fall behind in no gift.  They need to submit to God, obey the Word of God.  The just shall live by faith.  Miracles were signs for unbelievers before the completion of scripture.   I'm not saying that God doesn't intervene.  We know He does, because God's Word says He does.  We don't pray for miracles.  We don't depend on miracles.  Miracles had their place.  We depend on the Word of God, the grace of God, the gospel, the means God intends for us in this age.

Sufficient Man didn't say anything about miracles, but he preached about the sufficiency of Christ and the ordinary means that God uses to accomplish His work in this age.  Believers need to understand how the work of God is accomplished.  They need to understand a proper view of sanctification.

Are unaffiliated Baptist churches fine with Keswick theology?  Are they fine with revivalism?  Do they have a biblical view (which is historic Baptist too) of sanctification?  Judgment must begin in the house of God.

*************

I'm at the airport in Oakland right now, and I reread this post to see what I thought of it.  That's important sometime in writing -- go back and read what you wrote to see if you still like it.  Edit it after some time has allowed you to come at it with a slightly different perspective.  I didn't change anything.  However, I'm going to add something.

From a positive standpoint, people can grow.  They must be humble, but they can grow, if they are willing to change.  Many men are into Keswick, are deceived, don't know it in other words, but they can change.  I encourage that.  I am leaving out names and places with hopes that will make it easier for someone.

Keswick Man, as I wrote above, said, "I've got to see God do stuff."  This discontent fuels Keswick.  It is covetousness, which is why it is for a wicked and adulterous generation.  God is "doing stuff" all over, about a trillion at any given moment.  He's doing so much stuff that we couldn't keep up thanking Him if we had a thousand tongues.  I see God do stuff.  What Keswick Man means, however, is that he needs to see signs and wonders.  What occurs is that people then manufacture those wonders, and then say God did them.  This is all over the place.  What is manufactured is a fraud.  I'm saying it's a lie.  It is a pernicious lie that is as bad as any lie told by the worst politician.

Unaffiliated Baptists need to be training their people to enjoy the stuff that God already gave them.  I'm not saying that Keswick Man wouldn't say that.  He'd agree, and probably feel like this post is misrepresenting him, because "he's not saying what I'm saying -- he's not saying that!"  They have the gospel.  They have the Holy Spirit.  They have a complete, authoritative, perfect Word of God.  They need to just use the stuff God gave.  Instead, they invent new stuff, because the old stuff isn't good enough.  Because they need stuff so much, they make up stuff.  This is rampant everywhere, but it is also all over with unaffiliated men.  If you criticize it, they pull the autonomy card.  Or they just attack back, or become political, I've noticed.  What do you think?

John 10:35, the Scripture Cannot Be Broken, and Perfect Preservation of Scripture

The Lord Jesus Christ makes one last visit to Jerusalem before His final trip back for His crucifixion beginning in John 10:22 in the winter at the Feast of Dedication or Hanukkah.  He immediately picks up on the conversation he had two months earlier at the Feast of Tabernacles, declaring Himself the True Shepherd of Israel, in fulfillment of Ezekiel 34.  The false shepherds of Israel pounce on His presence, confronting Him about His identity with a motive to trap Him in blasphemy.  Based upon Jesus' answer, they pick up stones in verse 31, they say (v. 33) "because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God."

Jesus answers the religious leaders with an argument from Psalm 82.  Verses 34-36:

34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?  35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;  36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

Jesus says, in the Old Testament corrupt judges were called gods, probably ironically, but the word "gods" was used for them because they received the Word of God, and they were the agents of God.  If the term “gods” could be applied to corrupt leaders, it’s not a stretch for the incorruptible, perfect, sinless, righteous, Son of God to be called God.  Jesus debunks their charge of blasphemy due to His words, putting back in play what should have been the criteria of their evaluation of Him as Messiah, His works (vv. 37-38).

In the middle of Jesus' argument, almost as an aside, He says, "unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken."  Here we get an astonishing revelation by the Lord Jesus Christ of His own bibliology.  First, He affirms that scripture is the Word of God and that the Word of God is scripture.  The writings (graphe) to which He referred were the Word of God, speaking of the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament, and especially Psalms.

To whom did the word of God come?  Jesus is referring to God's Old Testament institution, the nation Israel.  God deposited His Words with Israel for their keeping.  One of the words in particular was elohim, "gods," in Psalm 82:1 (which the NASV translates in a way that Jesus would not have approved, "rulers").  The Word of God, Scripture, says, "gods."  God inspired that word and now Jesus was making an entire argument from one word.  That one word was given to Israel in Psalm 82 and continued in a line from there to when Jesus used that chapter and that verse and that word to make an argument.  So, second, the line of inspiration and teaching began with God's deliverance of the word "gods" (elohim) to Israel.

Third, scripture cannot be changed, not one word.  Scripture remained a seamless chain that could not be broken.  God would not allow even one word to be lost.  It is axiomatic.  The written scripture cannot be broken.  In perhaps the most serious claim Jesus could ever make, He makes His argument on the basis of one word.  This isn't the first or only time He had done that.  This was His view of scripture.

When Jesus says that scripture cannot be broken, and He is speaking of just one word.  God would not allow the uninterrupted chain of inspiration and then perfect preservation to be broken.  It cannot be broken.

Fourth, by saying that scripture cannot be broken, He is saying that every Word of Scripture would also be available.  Preservation implies availability.  If it is not available to you, then it isn't preserved for you.  Every Word would always be available to the institution to which God ordained.  By the time we get past the long, hand-copy phase of preservation, scripture is still not broken.  It cannot be broken.  Every Word of God is available for whatever argument is necessary to defend the teaching of Scripture.

God gave the Words of the New Testament to the church and He continued to use the church has His means of continuity of the Words of God.  Just like His Old Testament Words, God's New Testament Words would remain available in God's New Testament institution, the church, for the purposes of proclamation and practice.  The use of "scripture cannot be broken" in its context reinforces the powerful argument of God's perfect preservation of scripture.

No one can prove that what Jesus was saying was true.  We don't possess the original manuscripts of the Old Testament.  How could one trust that every Word of Scripture was preserved?  Jesus said so.  That's how.  If He said so, then it is a matter of faith, a matter of faith that is rejected by those who correct the Hebrew Masoretic text with either the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Septuagint, either of which is to say that Scripture can be broken and it was instead lost for awhile in contradiction to what Jesus said.

If the New Testament Scripture could not be broken, which it can't, then the seamless chain of preservation must exist between 1500 and 1881 and then beyond.  We can trust what Jesus said.

The Pharisees did not contend with the argument of Jesus.  They did not say, "Oh yes, scripture was too broken."  They didn't believe that.  Jesus affirmed scripture cannot be broken.  If the New Testament is scripture, which it is, then it cannot be broken either.  If the New Testament cannot be broken, then the church unto which God gave the New Testament could not and would not lose any of the Words of God.  If any were lost, like modern textual critics and most evangelicals and many fundamentalists assert, then what Jesus said was not true.  What Jesus said was true as what Jesus said would always be true.

Oasis of Hope in Tijuana, Mexico: Scamming Desperate Cancer Patients with Quackery

People who get cancer are often very desperate.  They are in a very difficult situation.  Furthermore, medical science does not make promises it cannot keep.  Our currently limited state of medical knowledge means that significant numbers of people with cancer will die from the disease.  While, by the grace of God and through the practice of scientific medicine in accordance with the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1, rates of death from cancer are gradually declining, it is still a horrible disease.  (By the way, you can invest in Eventide's Healthcare and Life Sciences Mutual Fund if you want to own companies that are developing cures for horrible diseases like cancer and also, probably, earn a great rate of return!)  Sadly, there are people who are willing to prey on and take advantage of those who are in desperate need with cancer.  Instead of showing genuine compassion to them, praying for them, and comforting them with the Scriptures, they take advantage of their physical need to rip them off, take their money away, and lower both their length and quality of life with false promises of cures.  There are many clinics in Tijuana, Mexico run by quacks and scam artists that prey on cancer patients.  The clinics are across the U. S. border so that they are free from the legal consequences they would fall under for scamming people in the U. S. A.  People with cancer would do well to seek reliable information on cancer, learn how to detect the lies and misinformation spread by cancer quacks, and get reliable information  on unconventional therapies from organizations such as the American Cancer Society.  When evaluating cure-claims by advocates of unconventional or alternative medicine, one should ask if the "treatment" is based on pagan or New Age ideas at war with Scripture, such as Reiki, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Reflexology, Iridology, Acupuncture, Macrobiotics, Naturopathy, Rolfing, Applied Kinesiology, Neuro-Emotional Techniques, and the vast majority of Chiropractic.  The following questions from the National Cancer Institute are also very worthwhile:

Many proponents of unconventional methods of cancer treatment make claims that are not or cannot be scientifically confirmed. They commonly present a treatment that has a very high degree of activity against cancers that are considered incurable; a treatment with few, if any, side effects; a treatment whose nature and exact contents are kept secret for fear of sabotage by the medical establishment. However, practitioners of unconventional treatments are held to the same research standards as those of any scientist: that a discovery be evaluated scientifically and reported in a timely and thorough fashion in the scientific literature so that others may learn of, evaluate, and critique the research results.

When scientific research shows that a new treatment method has promise, the method is evaluated in clinical trials with cancer patients. These studies are designed to answer scientific questions and to find out whether the new treatment is safe for patients and effective against the disease. The NCI booklet "What Are Clinical Trials All About?" provides further information about such studies. Patients interested in investigational treatment should ask their physicians to determine whether they are eligible for a clinical trial.

Patients and their families may wish to consider the following questions when making decisions about cancer treatment:

• Has the treatment been evaluated in clinical trials? A reference librarian can help patients interested in a particular treatment find out whether it has been reported in reputable scientific journals
• Do the practitioners of an approach claim that the medical community is trying to keep their cure from the public? No one genuinely committed to finding better ways to treat a disease would knowingly keep an effective treatment a secret or try to suppress such a treatment
• Does the treatment rely on nutritional or diet therapy as its main focus? At this time, there is no known dietary cure for cancer. In other words, there is no evidence that diet alone can get rid of cancerous cells in the body
• Do those who endorse the treatment claim that it is harmless and painless and that it produces no unpleasant side effects? Because treatments for cancer must be very powerful, they frequently have unpleasant side effects
• Does the treatment have a "secret formula" that only a small group of practitioners can use? Scientists who believe they have developed an effective treatment routinely publish their results in reputable journals so they can be evaluated by other researchers.

The use of unconventional methods may result in the loss of valuable time and the opportunity to receive potentially effective therapy and consequently reduce a patient's chances for cure or control of cancer. For this reason, NCI strongly urges cancer patients to remain in the care of qualified, board- certified physicians who use accepted methods of treatment or who are participating in scientifically designed clinical trials. (Board certification is one way a practitioner demonstrates that he or she has had training in treating patients with cancer.) Often, it is appropriate for patients to consider investigational therapy. For such patients, clinical trials are a treatment option.

Oasis of Hope in Tijuana, Mexico is a classic example of a clinic that scams desperate cancer patients with quack remedies in order to make vast sums of money.  It is currently run by Francisco Contreras, son of Ernesto Contreras, who started the business in 1963.  As of the date when this blog post was written (note: Oasis changed the links to the tables below after the blog post was written, but kept the tables; the tables are from their website as of 8/2018), the Oasis of Hope website prominently displays the following tables:

NOTE: THE "STATISTICS" BELOW ARE FAKE, AS IS DEMONSTRATED IN THIS POST.

NOTE: THE "STATISTICS" BELOW ARE FAKE, AS IS DEMONSTRATED IN THIS POST.

NOTE: THE "STATISTICS" BELOW ARE FAKE, AS IS DEMONSTRATED IN THIS POST.

NOTE: THE "STATISTICS" BELOW ARE FAKE, AS IS DEMONSTRATED IN THIS POST.

NOTE: THE "STATISTICS" ABOVE ARE FAKE, AS IS DEMONSTRATED IN THIS POST.

Oasis of Hope even claims to have "better survival rates than any other cancer treatment center in the world."  Sounds good, no?  Too good?  Do you notice anything suspicious about the statistics above?  What questions would you ask about them?  (Think it through--think about the warning from the National Cancer Institute above--and then go to the next paragraph.)




The first thing one ought to notice is that there is no way to verify the statistics.  There is no way to know whether each claimed cure represents one person who happened to live a long time or an average of 1,000 people's lifespans.  There is no way to know whether or not the statistics are entirely made up and represent nothing at all.  I consequently wrote to the Oasis of Hope business and asked the following questions:

In terms of the cancer survival statistics on your website, please let me know precisely how your follow-up system is organized.  How and how often do you communicate with patients after they leave?  What percent of patients let you know how they are doing?  Is the stage of cancer independently verified and the outcomes independently verified, or does your clinic assess the stage of cancer and conclude the outcomes without any independent verification? 

What was Oasis of Hope's reply?  "[R]egarding your inquries about how we calculate our cure statistics and our follow up department processes, . . . that . . . is not public information[.]"  Instead of explaining why anyone should believe their statistics of "cures" are not fake, I was asked to fill out a survey and get the process going of having Mr. Contreras evaluate me.  I asked a second time:

I do not understand why Oasis of Hope would not make the facts underlying the charts on [its] website available so that people could validate that the material is legitimate.  I could in no way justify recommending that anyone trust [his] life to your institution without any way to verify that the cure rate tables published and promoted on your website are real.  I do not understand why your follow up procedures would need to remain hidden if they are quality and reputable ones.  I can't imagine going to a hospital that advertised that they had the best rates of cancer-cures of any place . . . but then kept hidden and secret the evidence upon which they made those claims rather than submitting them to the rigorous analysis and validation that justifiable claims can undergo.

They never provided any evidence in response to repeated inquiries.  Never.  Why?  Because what they do does not cure cancer.  Their home page claims to be carrying on "the healing legacy of Dr. Ernesto Contreras, Sr."  However, an evaluation of the senior Contreras found most patients unaware of the stage of cancer they had, medical records unavailable for review, and an average survival time of only 7 months (pg. 463, Herb-drug interactions in Oncology, Barry R. Cassileth, K. Simon Yeung; accessible free online at Google Books). The conclusion that "Contreras therapy is ineffective in treating late-stage cancer recipients" was reached. Furthermore, "By 1974, Dr. Contreras stated that he was seeing 100-120 new patients per month, with many more patients returning to obtain additional Laetrile. . . . [His] statistics may not be reliable. In 1979, he claimed to have treated 26,000 cancer cases in 16 years. Yet when asked by the FDA to provide his most dramatic examples of success, Contreras submitted only 12 case histories. Six of the patients had died of cancer, one had used conventional cancer therapy, one had died of another disease after the cancer had been removed surgically, one still had cancer, and the other three could not be located" (source).  The Cancer Journal for Clinicians reviewed the Contreras program and concluded that there was no evidence at all that it worked (source).  Cancer centers nationally also warn that his therapies don't work (e. g., source #1 and source #2.)  If the clinic really has the rates of cure it advertises on its website, why don’t they get someone independent to verify them? Contreras would get a Nobel Prize if he really developed cures in the way he claimed. The clinic does not get independent verification because it cannot, and the people that run the place know it.  Any objective validation of what they do demonstrates that what they do does not work. So why do they continue?  Are they sincere, but deluded?  No--they are money hungry, ripping people off to enrich themselves.  Consider the following testimony by someone who is totally convinced that what they does works and has gone to the Oasis of Hope business for several years:

I have paid over 300 thousand dollars US so far. The 25,000 [initial payment] is just an introductory. If you have a severe case, you will pay a lot of money. I am fortunate to have some money from my aerospace company I founded, but my honest opinion is that this hospital will help you the most and get you better if you have a lot of money. They are in a figurative sense, milking me of my money but, I really have no other choice, while it is costing me a lot of money, they are keeping me alive. So I am grateful for that. They do ozone iv, uv iv, perftec, vitamin c iv, laetrile iv, vit k iv and nurtracuticals. [Quack stuff that does not cure cancer.] Also they do light chemo too [which only makes cancer more resistant and does not cure it.] . . . . At Oasis, they will keep me alive until I run out of money i guess. The treatment is very expenisive [sic] at Oasis. The rates for medicines, surgeries are more expensive than in England. For example, an antibiotic in England cost me about say $30 US. The same at Oasis, they charged me $250 US. To remove a cyst in England I was quoted about $500 US. I paid almost $3000 US at the Oasis of Hope Hospital. That is a much higher rate. A bone scan in England cost me about $400 US through a private company, at Oasis I paid . . . $1000 US. . . .

The owner is Dr. Contreras Jr,, He is a very intelligent guy, first, his intelligence is in the form of being a clever businessman first. He really presents himself as a religious man, but I will say that after 3.5 years of getting acquainted with him, the man's first priority is money.

He uses religion to hide his somewhat money hungry side. He lives in San Diego in a large estate, just across the border. He also has a large property with maids and expensive furniture and antiques in Tijuana and a house in Vienna, as well as many houses throughout resort cities in Mexico and Europe. Most who work with him, think he is very humble person, who lives a meager lifestyle and is deeply involved in religion. Yet, he lives the life of a wealthy aristocrat. He keeps a very low profile on monetary matters. He does very little there in terms of actual medical practice at Oasis, mainly he just checks on the business and make sure thing are in order. He comes in a few times a week to check up on things. He does meet once a week with his team of doctors and he does evaluate some patients.

But, his role is mostly a PR role and he mostly does question and answer interviews in the Oasis cafeteria and on the third floor in their meeting room. He is very charismatic guy, dressed in expensive Armani suits with slightly grayed hair and skin that has been treated and pampered with facials.

His nephew is named Daniel Kennedy and he is the CEO. I met him many times too. He also presents himself as a religious guy, with a degree in divinity.

He would also tell me stories about how he was working on a doctorate in psychology and that was his passion. He by training has an MBA and is the main person that took Oasis of Hope Hospital . . . to a more business run place with the first priority of making money first then helping.

Having talk to Daniel Kennedy many times, the financial side to Daniel Kennedy came out numerous times.

Actually under the leadership of Daniel Kennedy, Oasis Hospital shifted its business plan . . . to charging far more expensive rates, well more than I would pay in the UK. Daniel Kennedy changed the pricing scheme to address the psychological impression that people have on price. His idea was to charge more money, as this would be associated with having better medical care.

Daniel Kennedy also developed a revenue sharing model that allows doctors to acquire a commission of all charges incurred. So, doctors that perform extra tests and extra scans and procedures will get a percentage of these profits. This is perhaps the wors[t] thing that happened to Oasis of Hope Hospital.

Daniel Kennedy's revenue based sharing has allowed the Oasis of hope hospital to substantially increase their profits. Patients may get extra tests and procedures in the process, depending on the doctor.

His fondness of wealth and business came out. Daniel Kennedy has expensive taste and he talked to me several times because they know I am successful, he talked to me about opening a clinic in England. He talked about the amount of money that could be made there if the proper people were involved. But, he did not mention about the people that could be helped.

He is a business guy who since his involvement with his uncle, has turned Oasis to a money making machine. Oasis profited over $20 million dollars US after expenses in 2006. That is how they can afford to be in Playas de Tijuana, basically on the beach in Tijuana, the most affluent part of Tijuana. It is actually across the street from the beach. There is an arena on the beach where they do bull fighting and other sports.

Considering the low gross domestic product per citizen in Mexico, $10,000 US is considered a good salary salary in Mexico. The low cost of labor, makes Dr. Contreras Jr. and Daniel Kennedy his nephew, very wealthy men.

Oasis Hospital by the way, does not engage in revenue sharing with other employees, from the lower tier rank and file. They earn the bare minimum, which is the a livable wage, but slightly above the poverty line there. As of today, I don't know their current financials now. But, I would assume that it is in the millions, that is profit too.

Dr. Contreras is a very wealthy man, most do not know this because he presents himself as a devout Christian. He hides this financial side of him through religion and charisma. But, if he indeed were pious, then try walking into his clinic with a little money and sick[.] [S]ervice will be refused.

Hence the dominant customer base are folks like myself from the UK. I don't want to say that Dr. Contreras Jr. is not religious, because he is, but money is his first priority above everything, then comes religion, kind of contradictory to the Christian faith. The money side to Dr. Contreras Jr. takes precedence over health care. . . . I guess this is the price to stay alive. I would rather spend $300,000 and be alive, then not be alive. I really thank Oasis for helping me, but don't go there thinking that you will only spend the bare minimum if you are very sick. Be prepared to pay a lot of money. . . . I figure that I will need to spend a total of 700,000 . . . to stay alive.

Consider these are the words from one who is so convinced that they are right that he is willing to trust them with his life and with $700,000.  Sadly, it is obvious that they are unprincipled con-artists who will milk needy people with cancer for all that they have.  If you have terminal cancer, do not go with quacks and con-men.  It is not true that "even if it doesn't cure me, it can't hurt," because every dollar you give such people funds more of their con-business and so contributes to the death of people who could have been cured by conventional medical science.  If you do not have terminal cancer, do not go with them.  If you do, expect your cancer to become terminal.  Furthermore, watch out for quack remedies that are not so immediately fatal as the Oasis of Hope.  The reason people are willing to trust their lives to such con-artists is that they have already bought into lower-level lies and misinformation by advocates of alternative medical misinformation.  Get educated, and evaluate such things Biblically and rationally.  Protect your family, your church, your community, and yourself from unconventional cancer "cures" promoted by thieves that come to steal, and to kill, and to destroy (John 10:10).

If you, or someone you know, has cancer and is considering Oasis of Hope or any other unconventional treatment, consider the following questions:

1.) Does the remedy have clear, properly tested and verified cure statistics?

2.) In creating these statistics, did they verify what stage of cancer a person had (e. g., I, 2A, 3B, etc.), and that the persons supposedly cured actually did have cancer?

3.) Did they follow up on their patients to verify that they were actually cured, or was follow up spotty or nonexistent?  Do they follow up on 100% of those they treat, or do they only publicize people who happen to still be alive while ignoring the rest?

4.) Do they utilize unsubstantiated testimonials about cures instead of objective testing?

5.) Have there been double-blind, placebo-controlled tests of the remedy, or only poorly designed tests, or no tests at all?

6.) Are their statistics independently verified, or are they only self-promulgated with no independent verification?

7.) Does the therapy require the rejection of basic laws of science or involve supposing New Age ideas?

If multiple double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, that were independently verified, have proven that the particular unconventional treatment you are considering works better than chemotherapy (and chemotherapy, when employed by science-based medicine, does work) for the particular type of cancer you or a loved one has, then perhaps it is worth taking a look at it.  After all, that is the sort of testing that real medicine undergoes--and passes.  However, if the particular unconventional remedy you are looking into cannot pass this sort of science-based test (and the reason unconventional therapies are not conventional, but alternative or unconventional, is because they cannot pass science-based tests--if they could, they would become conventional), by rejecting the Biblically-based scientific method for unconventional "medicine" that does not work you are violating the sixth commandment by rebelliously refusing to preserve life.  Start planning for a funeral, because the "medicine" you are going to spend vast sums to adopt will not work any better than a placebo.  You are the simple person who believes every word instead of the prudent man who looks well to his going (Proverbs 14:15), and you will pay for your foolishness with your life.

Sadly, I spent the time looking into the (falsely named) Oasis of Hope because of someone who I knew who had cancer and was going to go there.  This person had been a True Believer in unconventional medicine for some time--despite the evidence that it is unbiblical and unscientific--and so, in the time of extreme trial, the person went with what had already been believed in for lesser difficulties.  (When you reach for the homeopathic nostrum to cure your common cold, you are preparing the way for an early death, for in a future serious medicinal situation you are likely to opt for a quack placebo treatment instead of real medicine.) The person decided to go there despite the fact that the Oasis refused to give the evidence for their "cure" statistics.  The Oasis at one point told me that they only disclose the basis for their "cure" statistics to those who attend their clinic, but when this person went there and spent vast sums of money on the Oasis's false hope, Contreras and his fellow wealthy con-artists still refused to explain how they derived their "cure" rates.  After two trips to the Oasis and huge amounts of money wasted, the person died of cancer a few months later--the person lived no longer than if no treatments of any kind had been pursued at all, and almost surely less time than if real medicine had been employed, because placebos do not cure cancer.  The only major difference between doing absolutely nothing and going to the Oasis of Hope was that Contreras had the family's money instead of the person's heirs.

The Oasis of Hope is a scam, ripping off desperate and needy cancer patients with quackery.  It should be renamed--perhaps Oasis of Lies--perhaps Oasis of Bankrupcy--perhaps Oasis of Quackery--or, best, the Oasis of Death.

On a final note--while the Oasis of Hope offers a false hope, the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son who has risen from the dead, offers real, certain, and eternal hope.  Find out how you can be 100% sure that you are delivered from the penalty and power of your sin and will have eternal life by clicking here.

TDR

Unaffiliated Baptist Churches: Analysis of the Emphasis, pt. 4

part one      part two      part three

The emphasis of unaffiliated Baptist churches relates to history.  These churches, like true churches all the way back to the first church in Jerusalem, have believed in the autonomy of each church with Jesus as the Head of each.  Each church was sufficient.  Each independent, Bible believing and practicing church saw the error infiltrating the church through extra-scriptural associations, boards, colleges, and camps, all augmentations to the biblical and historical practice. To ensure no leaven was leavening their lump (1 Cor 5), they pared back to just each church in fellowship with other churches of the same faith and practice alone.  The doctrine of the church took prominence in light of this history.

Other doctrines besides church related doctrines are important.  The church is God's institution for preserving all of the truth, not just church doctrine.   For instance, the gospel is important.  Unaffiliated Baptist churches should not affiliate with churches indifferent to a false gospel.  The gospel should get more attention than whether someone is closed communion.  Baptist churches are built on true conversions, not on whether they practice closed or close communion.  By saying that, I don't mean at all to disrespect the truth about the Lord's Table.

Baptist churches, including unaffiliated ones, have been greatly affected by two related false doctrines, which have spread a false gospel and a faulty doctrine of sanctification:  Keswick theology and revivalism.  Thomas Ross has written much about the former, and it's worth reading everything (it's free).  At some point, if you want to understand revivalism, read Ian Murray's Revival and Revivalism.  You can learn at Thomas Ross's site about revivalism (here again), but also in what I've written (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) much on it.  Another good book to understand is Jonathan Edward's criticism of the first Great Awakening, Treatise on the Religious Affections (free all over online).  I left revivalism when I left fundamentalism, but I've come back to it again in a sense with unaffiliated Baptist churches.  It's intolerable to me.  I left it.  I'm not going back.  Unaffiliateds do not have to affiliate but with any church of the same belief and practice, but I want to affiliate, and these posts are about affiliation, not unaffiliation.

Keswick theology is second-blessing theology, the two blessings being salvation, when someone accepts Jesus as Savior, and then later, when he gets serious and makes Jesus to be Lord of his life.   Almost always the latter comes through a crisis situation, perhaps a "revival," which is where revivalism dovetails.  Because there are so  many "carnal Christians," they need revival, and churches are constantly looking and preaching and praying for this experience.  This is not biblical or historical Christianity.  Even though both are related to perversions seen in scripture, especially in 1 and 2 Corinthians, they began in the nineteenth century in Great Britain and then America.

Not necessarily in any order, the following is an enumeration of how I see Keswick theology and revivalism among unaffiliated Baptist churches.  Churches have been affected to varying degrees, but I can't say to what degree any one unaffiliated Baptist church has been affected.  I hear it, read it, and see it.

1. Evangelism Methodology
2. Content and Style of Preaching
3. Admission of God Still Speaking or Showing a Message
4. Music or Worship Philosophy and Practice
5. Church Growth Innovation
6. Pattern of Prayer
7. Pastoral or Missionary Call
8. Tolerance of Keswick and Revivalism
9. Tolerance of Churches Not Preaching a True Gospel
10. Keswick Presentation or Language of Sanctification

There are others.  I'm not saying that the above list is more rampant than in evangelicalism and fundamentalism and among independent Baptists.  It's there though, and I want unaffiliated Baptist churches to think about it.  I'm not going to take the time right now to talk about all the ways I believe I see the above ten.  I'm just leaving the list for now.

I'm hearing and reading some very good thinking and doctrine among unaffiliated Baptist churches. That could become the norm and grow, or the churches could regress.  Part of our cooperation with other churches, our love, is the willingness to listen to one another, to open ourselves up for correction.  I am willing to do that.  I don't think it's nosy to care about one another.  We have to be able to bring up subjects.

We shouldn't wait until things get bad and then just cut each other off.  We need to be willing to listen.  Part of getting together and cooperating should be sanctification. If we're going to support one another, we've got to be willing to discuss doctrine and practice for the glory of God.  We should not find a few areas we agree and ignore where we don't.  That is not "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."

Unaffiliated Baptist Churches: Analysis of the Emphasis, pt. 3

part one    part two

Without being unaffiliated, a church will disobey something in the Bible.  The history of unaffiliated Baptist churches is essentially seeing a disobedience to scripture that can't be avoided without ceasing the affiliation.  Those churches recognized the necessity to be pure for the Lord and turned unaffiliated for that purpose.  Unaffiliated doesn't mean not fellowshiping.  Unaffiliated Baptist churches do fellowship, but they separate from those associations that result in disobedience.

You don't see conventions or associations or boards in scripture.  Those are added to scripture.  They smack of something akin to Roman Catholicism or even originate from Roman Catholicism.  These extra-biblical entities are often justified with a faulty view of the church.  The unaffiliated churches see this and know this.

I'm promoting unaffiliated Baptist churches.   Out of loving consideration and correction I write this about where I see weakness.  The comment section of part one digressed to thoughts about Baptist successionism and authority.  I would like to dovetail some criticism of unaffiliated churches with those topics in the comment section.  Where I went with my analysis was with the dubious emphasis that causes problems for these churches.  I parked on the influence of Keswick theology.

Unaffiliated Baptist churches much concern themselves with individual church authority.  They are criticized for this, as if authority doesn't matter.  At the same time, for their concern with authority, unaffiliated churches often get their authority wrong according to an influence of Keswick theology or just because of keswick theology, which I'll address later in this post.

It would take a series of posts to represent a biblical view of authority.  Unaffiliated Baptist churches (of which ours is) don't believe a baptism is valid without proper authority -- a proper, authoritative administrator of the baptism.  Only a church can baptize.  They also define a church that possesses authority, a historical basis for which the concern of unaffiliated Baptist churches exists.  Roman Catholicism doesn't have authority and, therefore, the churches that proceeded from them, Protestant churches, don't have it either.  They would baptize someone even who had been baptized in a Protestant church, saying this was "alien immersion."

The above has led some to think that an unaffiliated type of Baptist church believes in only visible, chain-link authority back to the first church in Jerusalem.  It would be to say that if you don't accept non-authoritative baptism, then you must by necessity believe in traceable, visible authority.  Any break in the chain would mean the absence of authority.  That's an argument against "proper administrator."  If there is no horizontal authority, people can pretty much operate as free agents out there.

The goal here is to obey the Bible.  The Bible can be obeyed.  God didn't write a book that suffers from such contradictions that you can't trust what it says to do.  The key here is to do what it says and not to extrapolate new teachings from human assumptions.  Flaws will arise from conclusions that don't follow scriptural premises.  The contradictions people find then often excuse them for doing what they want and how they want to do it.  The "Lord leads men" to start parachurch organizations and they're justified.  The "Lord leads men" to go somewhere to start a church with no sending church or appointment.  The "Lord leads a man" to pastor and that should just be accepted.

Let's assume someone is baptized by a true church. His employer says to move, so he does, and when he doesn't find a good church at his new location, he feels the Lord has led him to start one.  He believes the Lord is leading him to pastor there.  He sees being a part of a church in the Bible, part of obedience to scripture.  It starts with his family.  He and his family members evangelize and he baptizes.  The group grows.  He decides to call it, "New City Church," after the name of the town. He trains someone else to pastor before he dies, and after he dies, that man pastors.  This process occurs a few generations.  Is that a true church?  Evaluating based upon scriptural belief and practice, let's say that it is very good, and even way better than any other church around -- exemplary -- seeming the place to be.  It's now into several generations of faithful belief and practice of scripture.  Shouldn't that count for something?  Why would that church need any other authority than what scripture says?

I arrive after the four generations.  I'm unaffiliated.  I say it's not a true church.  My first hint is that it is not called Baptist.  I'm suspect of a church called, "New City Church."  I don't think it probably has proper authority or else it would be called a Baptist church.  I ask some questions.  I find the answers insufficient.  Based on what they say, I tell them they are not a church, the pastor isn't a pastor, and none of them are baptized.  The New City Church people call me crazy.  No church can trace its authority back to Jerusalem anyway.  Since no church can find a chain-link visible line of authority, no one really needs authority.  I'm told that God has shown His approval of New City Church by how great they've done for several generations.  That's their authority.

Church authority, if it exists, could affect a lot.  Are you baptized without it?  Can you pastor without it?  Are you a church without it?  According to an even bigger picture, do we have a perfect Bible without it?

Let's start with the following.  Did Jesus appoint Himself as Head of the church?  Did Jesus say, "I think I'll start a church on my own on my own authority with my own prerogative as the Son of God"? Did Jesus even self-appoint Himself to be King, the Messiah?  The answer is "no" to all of those. Nobody promoted Himself into the rightful office of King.  You were not King by self-promotion. That is a big deal in the Bible.  The whole line of authority in scripture is very, very important.

Look at Israel.  How important was being anointed as King?  It was huge.  Even the issue of the birthright, the appointed heir, that was important.  Scripture is replete with this.  It is a very, very common teaching.  It is the teaching of the Bible.  I could give you multiple examples.  The Apostles themselves weren't self-promoted nor launched out on their own.  It's actually the consistent teaching all the way through the Bible, found everywhere.  Jesus traveled to John the Baptist for baptism, because John had authoritative baptism.  Jesus did only what He did because that was what the Father had him to do.  When men did something other than what God authorized in scripture, they were in trouble, sometimes even killed.

If someone really is scriptural, then he will see that this authority issue is a biblical teaching, not some extraneous sidebar.  The lack of historical evidence, the absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence.  A believer will act in faith regarding authority.  If he sees he doesn't have it, he will want it.  Jesus gave the "keys of the kingdom."  He said, "all power (authority) has been given me."  Paul writes, "How will they hear unless they be sent?"  Becoming a pastor requires the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.  Those with authority provide authority.  It's very serious to challenge authority, a very serious aberration.  Those who move outside of authority are the actual heretics of Titus 3.

If you say "Bible sole authority," you are not more biblical if you deny or avoid human authority. The Bible has taught it.  The Bible has put its belief and practice under the authority of the church. Canonicity involves the church.  Scripture is what the church says it is.  It is because scripture says that it is because the church says it is.  The church authority is scriptural.  The church is the pillar and ground of the truth.

We live in a rebellious age, where people like the idea of God moving unilaterally, and this is another where I witness another iteration of Keswick.  I see unaffiliated men usurp authority, how God works, an objective authority of the church, through the "Lord led me."  How does God lead?  He leads through authority. "God gave me this new method, and God is really using it."  "God is using it;" that's the authority for it.  It can't be questioned, because God gave it.  God doesn't work that way.

I see contemporary Christian music in unaffiliated churches and it is acceptable in those churches. Because God has "worked" through that music and God is "working" through that music, it must be fine.  Is there authority for this new measure?  Why is something churches didn't approve now approved?  Where is the authority for this?  There isn't scriptural authority, but this is something new, authority by means of the outcome of experience.

Unaffiliated churches emphasize, it's true, the authority for baptism.  What about the authority for contemporary and/or southern gospel music?  Is this the historic worship of Baptist churches?  The Bible was passed down, but why not, for instance, psalm singing?

I told you I was going to dovetail authority and Keswick.  A man is a pastor not because of a subjective experience, but because of the agreement of men who see that he fulfills the qualifications. He has a desire, not a feeling, a desire that emerges from preaching.   The desire is good.  If he wants it, then objective standards can be ascertained, not some mystical call immeasurable except by a feeling, perhaps the same one the same churches experience from carnal music.  They feel something they call the Holy Spirit, but the feeling arises from the flesh.

Keswick's History: Keswick Theology's Rise and Development in an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 4 of 5

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Specifically, the Keswick form of the Higher Life theology was formulated through the central influence of Hannah W. and Robert P. Smith at the Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton Conventions that immediately preceded the first Keswick Convention.  The first and following Broadlands Conferences were held at the invitation of the dedicated spiritualists Mr. and Mrs. Mount-Temple, and all sorts of infernal spirits, doctrinal differences, and heresies were warmly welcome.  Speakers included the universalist George MacDonald, who received his prominent speaking position at the direction of his good spiritualist[1] friends[2] the Mount-Temples.[3]  He became good friends with fellow universalist Hannah W. Smith.[4]  Nonetheless, while Christian orthodoxy was by no means held in common by the Broadlands speakers, “[t]he ‘Seed,’ of which George Fox spoke, was rooted in them all,”[5] and those in “the Society of Friends”[6] rejoiced at the messages brought, as did the spiritualist Mount-Temples, who continued their very influential patronage of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

At the first and flagship 1874 Broadlands Convention Robert “Pearsall Smith was chairman and principal speaker, though, before the week was done, it became evident that his wife, Hannah Whitall Smith, was a herald of the evangel they carried yet more effective than himself.”[7]  Indeed, she was the chief of the Broadlands preachers.[8]  Further Conventions, led by Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith and with ever-larger crowds, were held at Oxford and Brighton[9] to perpetuate the Higher Life teaching of Broadlands.[10]  Mrs. Smith’s captivating preaching bewitched her audiences, so that at Oxford and Brighton no hall was large enough to accommodate the crowds that flocked to hear her.[11]  The meetings reminded Hannah W. Smith and others “of the days when George Fox,” the founder of the Quakers, saw countless numbers “convinced . . . during . . . his meetings,” or of the “wonderful Yearly Meetings” that took place in the days of the prominent Quakers “Elisabeth Fry and Joseph John Gurney.”[12]  Following these Conventions, meetings specifically in the English town of Keswick, from which the new doctrine preached by the Smiths came to obtain its name, were proposed in 1875.  An Anglican minister,[13] “Canon T. D. Harford Battersby . . . [who] . . . was part of an old and well-to-do west-country Quaker family that had moved into evangelical Anglicanism in the early 19th century,”[14] and “a friend of his, Mr. Robert Wilson, a Quaker who also was specially blessed [at the earlier Higher Life meetings led by the Smiths] . . . decided to hold a Convention at Keswick, where similar teaching should be given.”  The “chief Brighton speakers,” of whom the most important were certainly “Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith, [were] to take part in it.”[15]

Thus, Quakers were so far from being convicted of sin and of their need to turn from their false religion and false gospel to Christ for the new birth, and instead so happy with the Higher Life theology of Keswick, that one of them could become co-founder[16] of the meetings at Keswick, be the “the heart and soul” of the Keswick mission fund,[17] be lauded by many Keswick writers and speakers,[18] and even be termed “the father of the Convention.”[19]  Since the Quakers Hannah and Robert Smith formulated and spread the Keswick theology at the preparatory Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton Conventions,[20] such acceptance of Quakerism was entirely expected.  As one Quaker periodical noted, extolling the teaching of the Brighton Convention:

[T]his wonderful gathering . . . [taught the] truth [of the Higher Life and] the renewed [post-conversion] baptism of the Holy Spirit . . . [which had been] revived in a time of darkness by the early Friends[.] . . . It has been often said that the Friends have always upheld this cardinal truth[.] . . . This is undoubtedly true, and many of the early Friends walked in the light of it, as testified by the writings of Fox, Penn, Barclay, Penington, and others[.] . . . Hannah W. Smith . . . felt that she had an especial message to the Friends in this country, and from [her] lucid setting forth of this truth many of us have derived deep and lasting benefit. . . . Perfection lies in this [Higher Life system]. . . . [T]housands . . . every day flocked to hear the Bible readings of Hannah W. Smith, eagerly accepting her clear and winning settings forth of the life of faith . . . [at] the Friends’ Meeting House . . . to a crowded assembly, those of our own body were proclaiming in triumphant strains the glory and richness of this full salvation[.][21]

Quakers were unequivocally welcomed at Keswick as true Christians.[22]  Thus, “[a]t the outset the management of the Convention was entirely in the hands of the two conveners, Canon Harford-Battersby and Mr. Robert Wilson.”[23]  The Quaker “Robert Wilson [was] one of the two founders of the Convention and its chairman from 1891 to 1900.”[24]  Speakers were for some years only selected at “the personal invitation of the conveners,” Wilson and Battersby, although in later times the “the Trustees of the Convention” began to make the selections.[25] William Wilson, Robert Wilson’s son, continued his father’s work when Robert became Keswick chairman,[26] Robert being the “successor” of Harford-Battersby after the latter man’s retirement.[27]  The succession was the more natural because Wilson was Harford-Battersby’s “principal parish worker,” regularly attending the Canon’s Anglican assembly Sunday evenings after attending the Friends’ Meeting in the morning.[28]  Indeed, Robert Wilson was not only co-founder of Keswick and chairman of the Convention for nearly a decade but was also the author of the Keswick motto “All One in Christ Jesus.”[29] Truly, “without Mr. [Robert] Wilson’s support and brave backing, there would have been no . . . Keswick story . . . at all.”[30] 

Consequently, the Anglican with a Quaker background, Harford-Battersby, and his chief parish worker, the unrepentant Quaker Robert Wilson, together founded the Keswick convention and  “invited . . . leading speakers [such as] Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith.  Mr. Pearsall Smith promised to preside.”[31]  “Robert . . . [was] invited . . . to preside and . . . Hannah Pearsall Smith . . . to give daily Bible Readings,” that is, to preach,[32] as well as to run the ladies’ meetings.[33]  Indeed, Keswick was to be “arranged around the Pearsall Smiths.”[34]  However, when Mr. Smith hastily withdrew because of a doctrine and practice the Brighton Convention Committee[35] was hesitant to explain, the Keswick movement almost collapsed.  Robert had been teaching that the baptism of the Holy Ghost was accompanied by physical sexual thrills because of the esoteric union of Christ with His people as Bridegroom and Bride, as described in the Song of Solomon.  Public confesson and repudiation of Robert Smith’s abominable teaching would indeed have cast a dark shadow over Keswick, since it was an indisputable fact that even without Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s presence “a continuity of teaching [was] maintained . . . the same as that given at the Oxford Conference,”[36] where the great spiritual secret of erotic Baptism was publicly proclaimed.  In that day of Victorian propriety very few would have wanted to propagate and preach a theology of sanctification invented by such persons.  The Keswick Committee consequently deemed it best to conceal the reasons for the withdrawal of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  In this manner the Higher Life could be proclaimed while the embarrassing shadow of the unholiness of its originators remained cloaked in obscurity.

See here for this entire study.

TDR

---

[1]               Lord and Lady Mount Temple determined that MacDonald should “have an hour all to himself” to address the Holiness Conference participants. (Circular letter, Broadlands, & December 30-31, The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter); cf. pg. 33, Transforming Keswick:  The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and Future, Price & Randall.  MacDonald was perfectly aware of the spirititualism of the Mount-Temples.  For example, he wrote to his wife about how he witnessed a medium at Broadlands winning a convert to spiritualism by employing her supernatural powers (pg. 26, Ruskin, Lady Mount-Temple and the Spiritualists:  An Episode in Broadlands History.  Van Akin Burd.  London:  Brentham Press, 1982).

[2]              Cf. pg. 27, The Life that is Life Indeed:  Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.  London:  James Nisbet & Co, 1910.

[3]              E. g., Mrs. Smith recorded the events of another conference at Broadlands in 1887 where George MacDonald taught (pg. 98, A Religious Rebel:  The Letters of “H. W. S,” ed. Logan Pearsall Smith, reprinting a Letter to Her Friends of August 1887).

[4]              The friendship between Mrs. Smith and Mr. MacDonald continued for many years; for example, in 1893 he was her guest at her home, and she wrote of him:  “George MacDonald . . . is the dearest old man, so gentle and yet so strong, and with such a marvellous insight into spiritual things. . . . [H]e has done a beautiful work in the world” (pg. 120, A Religious Rebel:  The Letters of “H. W. S,” ed. Logan Pearsall Smith; from Letter to Her Friends, September 11, 1893).  Hannah recommended George MacDonald’s book Diary of an Old Soul to her daughter Mary, affirming that it “will help you” (Letter to Mary, January 27, 1883, reproduced in the entry for December 9 of The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter).  Mrs. Smith likewise wrote of her great “unity” with “George MacDonald,” saying that they “got very close,” and  affirmed:  “It has been a sort of dream of my life to . . . sit at the feet of [him],” as she was able to do at the Holiness Conferences at Broadlands.  MacDonald was a welcome presence and speaker at English Holiness Conferences, for if Hannah W. Smith’s universalism was no barrier to her, neither was his universalism a barrier to him—indeed, to Mrs. Mount-Temple, universalism was a reason to receive promotion and influence (Circular letter, Broadlands, & December 30-31, The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter).

[5]              Pg. 62, Evan Harry Hopkins:  A Memoir, Alexander Smellie.

[6]              Pg. 64, Evan Harry Hopkins:  A Memoir, Alexander Smellie.

[7]              Pg. 64, Evan Harry Hopkins:  A Memoir, Alexander Smellie.

[8]              Note, e. g., that a list of Broadlands Conference speakers and attendees places the Smiths first, following only the hosts, Lord and Lady Mount-Temple (pg. 34-35, The Life that is Life Indeed:  Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.  London:  James Nisbet & Co, 1910.  Cf. pgs. 186-187, where in the list of participants in the last Conference of 1888, she is prominent again, the first woman in the list after the Mount-Temples.).  “Amongst the speakers [the Broadlands historian] think[s] first of Mrs. Pearsall Smith[.] . . . ‘The angel of the churches,’ Lady Mount-Temple used to call her” (pgs. 48-49, Ibid).

[9]              “The most popular sessions of the Brighton Convention were those in which Hannah [W. Smith] preached her practical secrets of the happy Christian life to audiences of 5,000 or more, mostly clergymen who were theologically opposed [correctly, 1 Timothy 2:9-15; 1 Corinthians 14:34-37] to the preaching ministry of women” (“Smith, Hannah W. & Smith, Robert Pearsall,” Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed. Timothy Larsen).

[10]             Approximately eight thousand attended the Brighton Convention from around twenty-three countries (pg. 23, So Great Salvation, Barabas).

[11]             Pg. 124, The Life that is Life Indeed:  Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.  London:  James Nisbet & Co, 1910.

[12]             Letter to Father and Mother, June 9, 1875, reproduced in the entry for July 26 of The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter.  Compare the articles on Elisabeth Fry and Joseph John Gurney in The Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, ed. Larsen.

[13]             Barabas, who fails to mention that the Anglican minister in question, T. D. Harford-Battersby, had a Quaker background, does record that Harford-Battersby had made the theological rounds from apostate Anglo-Catholicism, to modernistic and evolutionary Anglican broad-churchism, to more evangelical Anglican low-churchism that was “strongly influenced by English Methodism” (pgs. 15, 24-25, So Great Salvation, Barabas).  One hopes that Mr. Harford-Battersby did not merely adopt better theology than the Anglo-Catholic and modernistic heresies that he had formerly followed, but if he was himself personally born again after turning to Anglican low-churchism Barabas makes no mention of such an event.  Indeed, Harford-Battersby’s two hundred and thirty page biography only states that he “he drew by degrees, but steadily, towards a calm and firm settlement in what are known as evangelical beliefs” (pg. x, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford),  “[b]eginning as a Tractarian, [but] little by little be[ing] led to Evangelical views”  (pg. 75, Evan Harry Hopkins:  A Memoir, Alexander Smellie).  Not a single sentence of the biography of Battersby mentions a new birth experience associated with his rejection of high-Anglican or Tractarian heresies.

It is not at all a good sign that the only record of anything like a conversion to Christ in Harford-Battersby’s biography is his own testimony that he first began to repent and believe when he received confirmation.  He wrote:

I had little of Christian principle. I was altogether a thoughtless, vile creature. I . . . was plunged . . . into idleness and dissipation . . . justly might I have been cut off in the midst of this course, but the Lord most graciously kept me[.] . . . [In] the care and goodness of God to me[,] He so ordained it that confirmation should come very soon[.] . . . Then I first learned to turn my thoughts really towards heaven, to repent, and believe in Jesus (pg. 6, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford).

Harford-Battersby thus indicates that he was a vile person, full of idleness and dissipation, but the Lord graciously kept him alive until he received the rite of confirmation, through which he came to repent and believe in Jesus.  Belief in such a ritualistic false gospel in his allegedly more evangelical and non-Tractarian childhood would provide an easy explanation for his ability to adopt the Roman Catholic heresies taught by (the later Roman Catholic Cardinal) Newman and the other high-Anglican Tractarians at Oxford during Harford-Battersby’s college days, such as a “visible church with sacraments and rites, which are the channels of invisible grace, an episcopal dynasty descended from the apostles, [and] an obligatory body of doctrine, to be found in Scripture, but only recognised there by the aid of Church tradition” (pgs. 24-25, Memoir).  “Mr. Battersby came under the spell. He missed no opportunity of hearing, not only Newman himself, but Manning and Pusey, and other leaders of the [Anglo-Catholic] movement. He discussed the sermons with his friends. He wrote about them in his letters home, and thus drew down upon himself grave warnings from his father as to the dangers of Romanising views” (pgs. 28-29, Ibid).

               Thus, one can hope against hope that Harford-Battersby was indeed born again at some point, but there is certainly no mention of such an event at any point in his biography.  Neither in his childhood before he adopted—which a true Christian will not do—an accursed sacramental false gospel (Galatians 1:8-9), nor after his entry into Anglican holy orders, when he “elected to begin ministerial work in a High Church parish” where baptismal regeneration and other sacramental heresies were taught because of his “admiration for Newman and the other leaders of the Oxford movement,” (pg. 52, cf. 43ff, Ibid), is there any evidence at all of a genuine conversion.  All that is recorded is that he gradually abandoned ritualism for rationalism and the broad-church Anglicanism of Frederick Myers, the curate of the town of Keswick under whom Harford-Battersby served after leaving his first ministry, and whom he regarded as “a guide and as a prophet” (pg. 288, Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals) although Myers was a spiritualist (pgs. 23-24, The Keswick Story, Polluck).  Under him Harford-Battersby learned not to be concerned about “trying to find out the right theory of inspiration” (pg. 67, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford).  He finally replaced Myers as curate after his predecessor’s death and then gradually moved towards evangelical ideas—which meant assent to the “truth of Protestant principles” rather than “Anglo-Catholicism” (pg. 60, Ibid), not personal conversion and the new birth.  Finally, after being convinced by the doctrine of Hannah W. and Robert P. Smith, Harford-Battersby was “persuaded that the current teaching of the Evangelical school itself was defective and one-sided, and . . . of the general truth of the teaching upon which the holiness movement was based” (pgs. 175-176, Ibid).  He then abandoned mainstream Anglican evangelicalism for the Higher Life doctrine characteristic of the Keswick theology, destitute of a clear testimony to a new birth, but possessed of a clear testimony to the second blessing of the Higher Life.  Such was the spiritual progress of the Anglican Canon without whose entry into the Higher Life at the “Oxford Convention . . . the . .  . Keswick Convention would never have had a beginning” (pg. 29, Forward Movements, Pierson).

[14]             pg. 340, Review by Ian S. Rennie of Keswick: A Bibliographic Introduction to the Higher Life Movements. by D. D. Bundy. Wilmore, Kentucky: Asbury Theological Seminary, 1975, in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 19:4 (Fall 1976) 340-343.

[15]             Pg. 170, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford.

[16]             Pgs. 25, 168, So Great Salvation, Barabas.  Canon Harford-Battersby, despite Wilson’s Quaker theology, considered him a “dear brother” (pg. 195, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford), and at the Canon’s deathbed, Wilson was by his side (pg. 219, Ibid).

[17]             Pg. 145, The Keswick Convention:  Its Message, Method, and its Men, ed. Harford.

[18]             For example, the Keswick classic The Keswick Convention:  Its Message, Method, and its Men, ed. Charles Harford, is dedicated “to the memory of Thomas Dundas Harford-Battersby and Robert Wilson, Founders of the Keswick Convention.”  In a chapter on Keswick men, J. Elder Cumming breathes not the slightest warning about Quaker heresies but concludes his very laudatory description of Robert Wilson with the following affirmation, after recounting Mr. Wilson’s death:  “Truly, the end of that man was peace! Who would not wish for such an end, if prepared for it, as he was?” (pg. 64, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford).  Thus, although Quakers deny justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ and other essential aspects of the Biblical gospel, Keswick leaders wished to be in the same place as Quakers like Mr. Wilson at death.  While one can hope that, somehow, Mr. Wilson did not actually believe in Quakerism and its false gospel but was truly converted, wishing to be associated in death with Quakers is not a little unwise.

[19]             Pg. 110, Evan Harry Hopkins:  A Memoir, Alexander Smellie.

[20]             Pg. 118, Memorials [of William Francis Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple], Georgina Cowper-Temple.  London:  Printed for private circulation, 1890; pgs. 335, 371, 407, 416-420, Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29^th to June 7^th, 1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875.

[21]             Pgs. 453-464, “Reflections on the Brighton Convention,” The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, 9:23-26.  London:  Barrett, Sons & Co, 1875.  Note that pages 416-420 of the Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29^th to June 7^th, 1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875 consists of excerpts from this article in the Friends’ Quarterly Examiner extolling the teaching at Brighton.

[22]             Pg. 111, The Keswick Story:  The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention, Polluck.

[23]             Pg. 13, The Keswick Convention:  Its Message, Method, and its Men, ed. Charles Harford.

[24]             Pg. 60, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford; cf. pg. 119, The Keswick Story:  The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention, Polluck.

[25]             Pg. 20, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.

[26]             Pg. 14, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.

[27]             Pg. 51, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.

[28]             Pg. 30, The Keswick Story:  The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention, Polluck.

[29]             Pg. 60, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.

[30]             Pg. 61, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.

[31]             Pg. 25, So Great Salvation, Barabas.

[32]             Pgs. 29, 149, Transforming Keswick:  The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and Future, Price & Randall.

[33]             Pg. 197, The Keswick Convention:  Its Message, its Method, and its Men, ed. Harford.

[34]             Pg. 11, The Keswick Story:  The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention, Polluck.

[35]             The Committee included Evan Hopkins, Stevenson Blackwood, the chairman of the Mildmay Conference, and Lord Radstock.  All these were solid Broadlands men, and Blackwood’s suggestion led to the expansion of the 1874 Broadlands Conference at the Oxford Convention (pg. 17, The Life that is Life Indeed:  Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.  London:  James Nisbet & Co, 1910).

[36]             Pg. 20, The Keswick Convention, ed. Harford.  Harford-Battersby testified to the profound influence of Robert P. Smith upon him and countless others:  “Not that I would shrink from confessing the great debt which I, and thousands more with me, owe to that remarkable man whose name has become a by-word and a reproach in the estimation of many whom I greatly honour” (pg. 173, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford).  Thus, “Mr. Smith . . . was at this time an honoured instrument in the hands of God for reviving the spiritual life in the hearts of hundreds, and even thousands, of devoted servants of Christ, both in this country [England] and on the Continent” (pgs. 174-175, Ibid).  That the teaching of Keswick was that of the Smiths is historically indisputable.