Hannah W. Smith's Mentor in the Sexual Baptism, Dr. Foster; part 18 of 21 in Hannah W. Smith: Keswick Founder, Higher Life Preacher, Quaker Quietist and Universalist Heretic

This entire 21-part study appears on the FaithSaves.net website in a study entitled “Hannah Whitall Smith: Higher Life Writer, Speaker on Sanctification, Developer of the Keswick Theology, Quaker Quietist and Universalist Heretic.” Click here to read the entire study.

Search for:

“Dr. Foster, while “a lifelong Methodist,” was “interdenominational” in his religious spirit.”

to read the section that was in the blog post below.

The Height of Postmodern or Two Truth Folly

You've probably read it, but they are talking about whether a white woman is black.  Why not?  In other words, like the man Bruce Jenner can be a woman, a white woman can be black.  White can be black and black can be white.  You do remember when they called Bill Clinton the first black president.  What does that mean?  People didn't refute it, so they believed it to the degree that it wasn't refuted.  You could already be black, when you were white.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes in Time, "Let Rachel Dolezal Be as Black as She Wants to Be."  You can be white and be black.  You can be a man and be a woman.  There are plenty of teenagers and twenty-somethings, who already wish they were black.  They're not black, but they want to act black. If anyone decided that someone talked black, we'd be in trouble, that is, unless someone did talk black, because he believed he was black.

Obviously, no one can talk black, because black is a color, but talking black is still a kind of talk, and everyone knows it, including blacks (read the writings of black author and linguist, James McWhorter).  I recently read about Tom Hanks's son, Chet, who believed that he should be able to "talk black," because he is a rapper.  On May 18 of this year, President Obama was giving a speech (which you can read here), and he said, "we can't then ask the police to be the ones to solve the problem."  I italicized "ask" because the president didn't say "ask" in the speech, but used the colloquial "axe" instead, or, "we can't then axe the police...."  Was this just a slip or was it purposeful?

The mainstream now is talking about whether Rachel Dolezal can call herself black.  She resigned from her post at the NAACP.  When you look at her picture, you see that she attempts to look black, I guess, by what she does with her hair.  Some blacks are straightening their hair, but she has turned her hair into an afro style in order to look black.  Like Abdul-Jabbar wrote in his article, you can't self-identify as "short," when you are seven foot four inches.  You aren't black, when you are white. However, this is where we're at in postmodern society.  You can be whatever you want to be.

The so-called scientific community knows we did not evolve.  Scientists know this.  Everyone knows this.  Naturalism must be true, so it is.  They create their own reality without design and without God's existence.  Your truth is your truth and your truth is someone else's error, but that doesn't make it error to you, only to them.  I want to be black, so I am.  I want to be a woman, so I am. Obviously this stops somewhere.  I can't just fly any passenger plane and I can't operate on someone's gall bladder.   We're headed the direction that everyone can make their reality whatever they want it to be.

As ridiculous as all of the above should seem, we've already arrived at this in churches.  In a sense, churches have trained the world in two truth folly.  I've sat in conferences where someone preached literal heresy and men "amen."  No error is pointed out.  Dispensational theology is true and covenant theology is true, even though that changes almost half the Bible.  You can be saved with or without repentance and both are true.  Lordship or not-lordship.  Both counted as true.

When the United States was changing in the nineteenth century, churches decided on two Bibles.  To grease this, to get it through the people in the pew, the mantra was quoted, "no major doctrine changed," or "no essential doctrine changed."  That isn't true.  There is doctrine that changes. Men invent non-essential.  That is a modern invention.  Depending on what Bible you use, you've got different dimensions for the temple in the millennial kingdom.  Wait a minute.  That's if there is a millennial kingdom, because you might be amillennial, and that's OK too for most Christians today.

The gospel centered or gospel core teaching revolves around what it is that we're willing to put up with.  So much is different that everything is reduced to the gospel.  We all know that this is just to admit that we don't know what the truth is.  Everyone just agrees to disagree.  You already know that you've got to agree to disagree on marriage.  Just bake the cake.  Why not?  We can't know anything anyway.

I hear some of the worst singing in the world, directed toward God, and half the crowd says, "What a blessing!" It might be the worst chicken scratching you can imagine, but no one says the obvious, that is horrible.  If you say it's bad, you're a rotten individual.  Hurting someone's feelings is worse than ugliness, sin, and false doctrine.  Third grade finger paintings are Da Vinci.  What I'm saying is that we already went there in churches.  Sentimentalism has replaced love.  If you think you can know, you're proud. If you don't know, you're humble.  Pride is humility and humility is pride.

Know this.  I'm not with any of this, but it is a very small group of people who are with me.  I don't know how few.  I would like you to tell me that you are with me on this.  I'll still keep believing in one truth, one goodness, and one beauty, but I'd like you to let me know.  I'm not talking hypothetically here, like some kind of thought experiment, like you're with me on paper and not in reality.  I'm asking if you do believe there is only one truth, one doctrine, one faith, one goodness, and one beauty.

John 6: Church Growth Methods and Other Sins

The Lord Jesus Christ came to save.  For someone to be saved, he must believe in Jesus Christ.  The book of John provides a sufficient basis for someone to believe in Him.  One portion of that basis for belief comes in John 6, where Jesus feeds the 5,000, walks on water, and teaches on the bread of life.

John could have included many other works and teachings of Jesus in his gospel, but he wrote the ones he did as a basis for saving faith in Christ.  Among a relative few, considering a three year long period, John 6 is included and it takes up a lot of space -- 71 verses.  It must be saying something vital and important, so what does it say that contributed to the purpose of John?  By the time you get to the end, you see that John 6 differentiates between the true believer and the false, and in so doing it helps define saving faith in Christ.  As a corollary, it reveals the method of the Lord Jesus and repudiates a wrong one.

We know from parallel gospels that Jesus fed 5,000 men and then women and children, so we could estimate 25,000 from the one little lunch of crackers and fish.  Verse 26 says they were all "filled," which means they were full, ate so much that they couldn't eat any more.  Jesus sent the disciples back to the other side of the sea and didn't go with them, because the crowd would follow, went into the mountain and then followed later by walking on water.  The next day the burgeoning crowd found and followed Jesus.

Jesus could have easily attracted the crowd with more bread, but He didn't.  There is nothing wrong with bread, but Jesus wouldn't use it to gain and keep a crowd, even for "further ministry."  We're not talking about a rock band or cowboy Sunday.  These were people who needed to eat and Jesus could give bread.  He didn't.  Why did Jesus run away from this crowd of people, rather than "take advantage" of their interest in Him? They were following Him for a wrong reason.  Jesus says this in verses 26-27.

Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.  Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed. 

That was Jesus in answer in essence to why He was evading them.   They were following Him for the wrong reason, and it was bread.  Bread.

Do you understand that churches today have as their strategy to get people to church for the wrong reason?   They use big days, open houses, food, music, buildings, programs, fun, among other reasons.  A common excuse I hear is, the Bible doesn't say it's wrong.  Jesus didn't just not give them what they wanted, but He was avoiding them.  Today's churches often run to them with the wrong reasons:  "Please take advantage of this wrong reason!"

Bread isn't wrong, so that obliterates that common reason.  I also hear people say, "These people are hungry, which is why we give them a hamburger."  It didn't matter that these people in Capernaum were hungry. Jesus wasn't giving them anything.

Instead of offering the meat that perishes, churches should give alone the meat that endures unto everlasting life.  That meat, that bread, is Jesus.

To be continued

How To Save Money on Groceries

Man shall not live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4), but we still all need to eat to live.  How can a family or an individual save money on groceries?  Price matching is a valuable tool that, in a few minutes, can save a large amount of money.

Walmart has a price-match guarantee on advertisements from local competitors as well as matching prices with online competitors.  Purchases at Walmart.com can also be shipped to a local store for free, so, essentially, lower prices both at local and at online competitors will be matched by Walmart in the store.  Furthermore, by signing up for Ebates and Big Crumbs, you can receive cash back for all purchases made at Walmart.com, so that it is possible, not to price match alone, but to actually match the prices of competitors and receive cash back on top of the matched price.  Other stores, such as Target, have price-match and ship-to-store policies similar to that of Walmart; utilizing Ebates and Big Crumbs can enable you to both match prices and receive cash back on any store that has such price-match policies.

In our area, stores with grocery advertisements that Walmart (or other stores with comparable policies) will price-match  include Aldi, Cermak, El Rey, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Walgreens, Pick n’ Save, Trader Joe’s, Woodman’s, Piggly Wiggly, Sendik’s, Sentry, Target, Kmart, and Costco.  Many of these merchants also advertise with Ebates or Big Crumbs; therefore, one can also get a discount on gift cards at these stores by purchasing them through Ebates or Big Crumbs, or by purchasing discounted gift cards directly, to reduce the grocery bill.  One who lives in another part of the United States, or even in a number of other countries, can follow a similar model to reduce his family’s budget for groceries.

If you have a tight food budget, utilizing the tips above can help you to have the funds to eat healthfully.  You should be a good steward of your life and the lives of those in your family by eating a balanced and nutritious diet.  Furthermore, God designed the human race so that a balanced diet provides the nutrients most people need.  Consequently, it is not surprising that many large-scale scientific trials, involving hundreds of thousands of people, indicate that taking vitamin and mineral supplements does not improve the health or extend the life of the general population.  These facts explain why non-profit consumer protection organizations recognize that many supplements are a waste of money and some are even harmful.  Thus, unless you have a clear medical need or have been told by your doctor to do otherwise, you should spend your grocery money on healthful food instead of wasting it buying vitamin or mineral pills that you do not need or that might even be bad for you.  If you feel, without a doctor’s recommendation and in the absence of a scientific basis, that you should take vitamin or mineral supplements anyway, you can do so for less than $1 a month instead of buying expensive, unnecessary, but well-advertised alternatives, and you should obtain reliable scientific information about vitamins or minerals instead of listening to the propaganda and myths created by the multi-billion dollar vitamin industry.  Indeed, you can save a great deal of money by avoiding unconventional and quack “medicine” in general, as it is often associated with the ungodly New Age movement and it rejects the Biblically-based scientific method (Genesis 1:26-28).  Be a good steward of the finances God has given you by saving on groceries and using your grocery budget for nutritious food instead of worthless or possibly harmful pills.

More Resources on Biblical Financial Stewardship

TDR

This entire study can be accessed here.

The Duggars: Christianity and Hypocrisy

People watch the Duggars.  Even by conservative Christian standards, they're odd.  The mean girls of the world call them creepy.  Many find interest in how they pull off having and raising that many kids.  As an outside observer, it looks like they're doing pretty well, better than about 90% of America.

The Duggars are a slice of life in the Bible belt, a large demographic from which to draw viewers.  In addition to their natural audience, the secular world watches like voyeurs, imagining how much smarter and superior they are and inventing new ways to diminish all Christians by criticizing the Duggars.

The Duggar family's association with and lack of rejection of Bill Gothard alone would prevent my fellowship with them.  Even though I identify with practices of theirs, I also wish they represented the Bible in a more biblical way.  The Bible isn't prominent.  Perhaps they self-edit to please the Learning Channel or scriptural reference is cut out as a part of their contract.  What appears is a superficial, popular type of cultural conservatism with a type of Jesus silently tagging along. Wholesomeness becomes their defining quality instead of the gospel.

Whatever you think of the Duggars, they still might be the most well-known evangelical Christians in America.   Even if you wish someone else represented Christians to the world, if you are really a Christian, you can't out-and-out reject them. They are on your side.  You are with them.

The Duggars also provide a barometer to gauge the opinions of popular media about the Christian worldview.  The window into the home of the Duggars becomes a window out to those who hate them.  For a plain demonstration of the insanity of this world, consider the comparative treatment of Bruce Jenner. It was fine to report the private testimony of the Duggar girls, but you're in trouble if you refer to Bruce with a masculine pronoun.

For those who already know about the recent reproach of Josh Duggar, I'll focus on a related topic -- hypocrisy.  Antagonists say both the Duggars and their son Josh are hypocrites and among other things.  I saw an article by Piers Morgan, whose most virulent judgment on them was "hypocrisy."

Does this incident expose the Duggars as hypocrites?  If so, does their hypocrisy cause a bad testimony to the cause of Christ or to the gospel message?  Are Christians themselves just a bunch of hypocrites?  Do the Duggars just reveal the obvious hypocrisy of Christians in general?  "They're all just a bunch of hypocrites!  And that's why I'll never be a Christian!"

By many people's definition, everyone in the world is a hypocrite.  Everybody breaks their own rules. Every parent does.  They break the very regulations they require of their children.

Many liberals hold their own set of scruples for others to keep and then violate themselves. Several entire volumes document the hypocrisy of liberalism (one, two), and a whole chapter could be written about Piers Morgan.  He's a hypocrite by his own standard even in saying he's disgusted with hypocrisy.

People like Morgan don't really hate hypocrisy.  They just don't like the Duggars's standards.  They use "hypocrisy" to ridicule and slander and posture.   Morgan isn't trying to stop hypocrisy.  He seeks to eliminate the standards he doesn't approve.

Pay attention to the irony.  I will admit it has become so normal that it can't be ironic, but stick with me.  Morgan can't allow for another standard but his own, which only tolerates or accepts his standard, one he doesn't even keep himself.  This is where liberals like him really are the true fascists.

When Is Someone a Hypocrite?

Is someone a hypocrite because he believes a standard, preaches a standard, and then doesn't keep the standard?  Being a hypocrite, at least based upon the biblical understanding, is more than violating one's own standard.  A biblical standard is good. Everyone should have one.  Nobody, however, can keep one.  That doesn't make it wrong to have and promote the Bible as a standard.  The Duggars are not hypocrites for having and promoting a biblical standard and then they themselves failing at that standard.  To avoid being a hypocrite based on this less than biblical definition, one must live a sinless life.

Very often the world misdefines hypocrite and then holds professing Christians like the Duggars to its wrong definition.  It's like calling peanut butter and jelly a T-bone steak.  The joke ultimately is on the ignorant folks swinging, missing, and laughing like they hit a home run.  It's like the impostor in the marathon, who ran into the Munich stadium in the 1972 Olympics, and the fans cheered, even though he joined the race toward the end and entered the stadium before anyone else.  He didn't get a medal.

The world also shows it doesn't understand Christianity, because Christianity isn't requiring sinless perfection.   Jesus lived the perfect life and that life is acquired for a Christian by faith.  You need Jesus because you're not perfect.

The concept of "hypocrite" in our culture comes from the Bible and Jesus applies it only to the Pharisees.  What made the Pharisees "hypocrites"?  In what way the Pharisees were said to be hypocritical is what it means to be hypocritical.

To grasp hypocrisy, you should understand two identifying marks to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. First, the Pharisees expected people to keep rules they didn't expect themselves to keep.  They didn't hold themselves to their own standard, and I'm not talking about sinless perfection, but just in general they weren't doing what they were telling others to do.  Then when they got caught doing what they weren't supposed to do, they didn't admit it.  They didn't confess it.  If you pointed it out, like Jesus did, they might kill you.   Second, the Pharisees were self-righteous. They depended on their own works, their own deeds or behavior, for their own salvation.  They had to be perfect and they weren't, and yet they posed like they were.  Expecting everyone to be perfect, when they weren't -- that was their hypocrisy.

Are these two above characteristics of the Pharisees' hypocrisy also characteristic of Christians?  I don't believe that hypocrisy characterizes biblical Christianity because Christianity isn't like the religion of the Pharisees.   A Christian can by a hypocrite, but true Christianity isn't by nature hypocritical, and I'll show the difference.

The world usually calls Christians hypocritical when they're in trouble for doing something wrong or they find out that some Christian was already in trouble for doing something.  When Christians sin, they don't have to tell the whole world they've sinned.  That's not a requirement of Christianity.  If no one else knows, they confess it to God.  Christianity attempts to keep it to the smallest number of people knowing.  Love covers a multitude of sins.  Heard that before?  However, the reason Christians are in trouble for sinning is because they are expected to keep the standard, the Bible.

True Christianity admits sin.  It says, "I don't keep the standard and I can't keep it.  I want to, but I can't."  It isn't self-righteous like the Pharisees. Christians admit they sin.  Christians try not to sin. They are looking not to sin, but they are not depending on their own perfection for salvation.  They depend on Jesus for salvation.  They depend on Jesus for salvation because they know they are sinners and they sin.

I watched the Duggar interview with Megyn Kelly, because the whole thing is online.  I wasn't surprised by the interview.  It's about how I thought things would go.  I believe the Duggars.  They looked genuine and sincere to me.  They weren't saying it wasn't bad.  They were just putting it all in perspective, something the world didn't do, because it hates the Duggars.  Hates them.

Josh Duggar broke the standard the Duggars hold for him and their family.  Josh Duggar obviously knew he had broken it, because he turned himself in.  The girls didn't turn him in. He admitted he was wrong.  That, my friend, is not being a hypocrite.  When you admit you were wrong, that's not being a hypocrite.  I'm guessing that the Duggars did not report every aspect of their punishment of Josh, but they did report that he was punished.  They did something about it.  They did not report him to the police right away.  If he wasn't punished, by turning himself in, the world wouldn't even be reporting on it right now.

As a brief aside, we should consider the idea of turning something into the police.  Are the police trustworthy?  Many liberals say, "No."  They use terms like "police state," and "racist cops."  Should anyone trust these police?  You can't have it both ways.  You can't say, "Don't trust the police," and then "turn yourself into the police."  What happens then?  They finally did trust the police and turned Josh in, but the man who listened to his confession, it turns out, liked looking at child pornography, and served prison time later for it.  The police reports, depended upon to expose the Duggars, come from these same police.  As you now know, the police chief violated the law in handing over this sealed, private information about a juvenile offender and his victims.  The selective outrage reeks of, yes, hypocrisy, and in the truest sense of the word.

You don't have to publish your sins to the world to avoid being a hypocrite.  You might not tell everyone about your worst behavior, because you are ashamed of it.  Christians are against what Josh Duggar did, which is why he didn't want everyone to know about it.  He's afraid that, if people find out, they'll think he's a hypocrite.  He believes the behavior is wrong, which is why he'd rather keep it private.  He confessed it to his parents, to church leaders, and finally to a state police officer.  He is not promoting his worst behavior, because he thinks it is wrong.  The Duggars think it is wrong.  That is not hypocrisy.  It is the opposite of hypocrisy.

That brings me to the next question I want to consider about hypocrisy.

Does Hypocrisy Ruin the Gospel Message?

Hypocrisy is one of a handful of the most common reasons unbelievers give for living out their lives for themselves.  They would be a Christian, ya know, if there weren't so many hypocrites.  As a result, they look for hypocrisy as another excuse for why they aren't Christians.  They want hypocrisy to exist, because without it, they wouldn't have one of their main reasons for not being a Christian. Why do they need any other reason for not being a Christian other than Christianity not being true?  If Christians are hypocrites, what are they betraying?  Are they betraying only a lie?

I'll talk more about this in part two.

Hannah and Robert Smith's Preaching the Higher Life's Erotic Baptism: part 17 of 21 in Hannah W. Smith: Keswick Founder, Higher Life Preacher, Quaker Quietist and Universalist Heretic

This entire 21-part study appears on the FaithSaves.net website in a study entitled “Hannah Whitall Smith: Higher Life Writer, Speaker on Sanctification, Developer of the Keswick Theology, Quaker Quietist and Universalist Heretic.” Click here to read the entire study.

Search for:

“The Methodist predator from whom Mrs. Smith made her most fundamental discovery of the spiritual life also believed in the doctrine, developed out of medieval and counter-Reformation Roman Catholic mysticism, that Spirit baptism brought physical sexual thrills.”

to read the section that was in the blog post below.

YOU MIGHT NEED TO STUDY MORE!

guest post by Bobby Mitchell, pastor of Mid-Coast Baptist Church, Brunswick, Maine

If you think "touch not; taste not; handle not" (Colossians 2:21) should be preached as "Don't mess around with the opposite sex, drink liquor, or steal stuff"... You might need to study more!

If you think "the old is better" in Luke 5:39 means "The old way of preachin', prayin', singin', and shoutin' is better" ... You might need to study more!

If you think "cannot discern between the right hand and the left hand" in Jonah 4:11 would be a good text to preach about Christians lacking discernment...You might need to study more!

If you think "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho" in Luke 10:30 means he went south...You might need to study more!

If you think "we fetched a compass" (Acts 28:13) means they got an instrument to point North...You might need to study more!

If you think that "abstain from all appearance of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22) means "Don't do anything that could possibly look wrong"... You might need to study more!

If you think "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Timothy 4:5) means "travel around and preach revivals"...You might need to study more!

If you think "quit ye like men" (1 Corinthians 15:13) means, "don't quit until the job is done" or "man up, and quit 'yer smokin', drinkin', and cussin'" ... You might need to study more!

If you think "He taketh no pleasure in the legs of a man" (Psalm 147:10) means "men shouldn't wear shorts"...You might need to study more!

If you think "vision" in Proverbs 29:18 means "a big dream or idea"...You might need to study more!

If you think "my people which are called by my name" (2 Chronicles 7:14) refers to the United States of America...You might need to study more!

If you take a "catchy" phrase in the Bible and preach it with no regard for the context, you REALLY need to study more!

I have messed up some passages in a BIG way!  The first message I ever preached, at the age of fifteen, was, "You need to let Jesus into your heart" (using Revelation 3:20).  I DEFINITELY should have studied more!  Now, I'm forty-one and I ABSOLUTELY need to study more!

"Study to shew thyself approved unto God..." (2 Timothy 2:15).

An Honest Basic Assessment of Independent Baptists, pt. 6

Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5

If independent Baptist churches were more independent, I believe they would be better off.  I'm an independent Baptist by conviction and the independence allows for purity.  As a true independent, you can fellowship or even associate with churches only of like faith and practice.  Because independent Baptists are independent, whatever might be wrong with a majority of independent Baptist churches doesn't mean that it must be wrong too with your church.

When I started this series, giving an honest basic assessment of independent Baptists, I did it out of love.  I would want to be of help, if possible.   In my assessement, as a way to help, I have said I think a perverted gospel is the biggest problem.  I'm confident that is number one.  For that reason, I spun off into a corollary series on the gospel, and I'm not done with it.

From the problem of a perverted gospel, I could say, not necessarily in order, another problem is susceptibility toward a success syndrome.  I don't know that this is number two, but I see it as major. If those first two problems were corrected, maybe that would solve every other problem too. However, a third problem, as I see it is....

A MISUNDERSTANDING OR MISINTERPRETATION OF THE GREAT COMMISSION

Because of either a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ, I don't believe it is either being obeyed or fulfilled by independent Baptist churches.  I see this as a root problem among independent Baptists.  Churches have also become complicated with human methods that don't result in obedience to the Great Commission.  Some relates to the perversions of the church growth movement.  Let me explain.

We are almost two thousand years since Jesus gave the Great Commission.  The first century Christians made excellent headway in fulfilling it.   They didn't get it done, but they were ahead of the curve, knowing now how much time would elapse since them.  For the few that they had, they went a long ways toward getting that command accomplished.  I've not heard from anybody that thinks we have finished that task that Jesus gave.  Have we not had enough time to get it done?

If the world is 6,000 years old, we've had a third of world history to finish what Jesus told us to do. Why isn't the Great Commission done?  I don't think that it is difficult to understand the Great Commission.  We are given some version of it in every gospel account.  We have some kind of elaboration on it in Acts and in the Epistles.  And then we are given examples to follow in Jesus, the disciples, and the Apostle Paul.  At the same time, I didn't understand the Great Commission as an independent Baptist until I became a pastor, and that is after six years of Christian school, four years of Christian college, and three years of seminary.

What am I talking about?

The Great Commission of Jesus is one command, and that is to make disciples.  The word "teach" is the only command in Matthew 28:19-20 (KJV, Go ye therefore, and "teach"), matheteusate (aorist imperative 2nd person plural).  To start, we have to understand that the Great Commission is to make disciples.  If you don't get a disciple or disciples, you don't fulfill the Great Commission.  The goal then is not to get professions of faith.  You want followers of Jesus Christ.

The Great Commission is for every person in an entire church, not just for the special forces in the church.  "Teach" is second person plural, so it is to the group, not just one person.  It isn't for the pastor alone.  Every Christian is to be making disciples.  You don't fulfill the Great Commission just by attending one or two services a week.  Churches have tolerated professing Christians who don't fulfill this command.  If you are perpetually disobedient to what God commanded, you couldn't be a Christian.  I wonder if most independent Baptists believe that.  What the churches tolerate is most often something short of obedience to this command.

Making a disciple is more than just preaching the gospel.  However, to go back to the first problem in this series, if churches are not preaching a true gospel, they won't be fulfilling the Great Commission. You won't get a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ without conversion.

From looking at the parallel passages to Matthew 28:19-20, we can see that making disciples requires preaching the gospel.  Churches have confused fulfilling the Great Commission with a church getting bigger.  They try to make their churches bigger instead of fulfilling the Great Commission.  The example we get in the New Testament from Christ and the Apostles is preaching the gospel everywhere and to everyone.

I've noticed that churches are not taking on the task of getting the gospel to everyone.  They are more interested in getting bigger and there isn't anything in scripture that tells us that is the goal.  In a desire to reach what isn't the goal, churches don't fulfill the goal God has set, so God's goal isn't being reached, still hasn't been after 2,000 years.  I would say that most people don't even know that is the first goal of the Great Commission.

Look at Jesus in His only three years of work.  He preached the gospel to everyone in Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Perea, and Caesaria-Philippi.  He did that in three years.  At that rate, shouldn't we have been able to finish what He started in the next 1,997 years?  There was nothing in there about having a big group.  It started with preaching the gospel to everyone.

I understand that not everyone wants to hear the gospel or will even allow it.  The same occurred with Jesus, but He also taught about that.  You don't have to preach to those who don't want to hear. You've fulfilled the Commission with them when you offer the gospel.  When I go out to preach, I recognize it is a free offer of the gospel, which is equal to preaching it, as long as I do preach it when they want to hear it.  Where I'm at, a low percentage even want to hear me preach it.  This is where we're at right now.

For the size of our church, I think we have done a good job at fulfilling our responsibility.  Even I alone have visited every house in Rodeo, Hercules, San Pablo, Pinole, and El Sobrante, and tell you that only to express what can be done.  Our church as a whole has also visited every house in Richmond, and Point Richmond, and Crockett.  We've preached it in addition in El Cerrito and all the way to Berkeley.  When I say that we've done a good job, that doesn't mean that we've really done a good job.  We've just done what, if every church did the same, would result in the job getting done.  We should be doing far more, so in that sense, we're doing a bad job and I'm doing a horrible job.

When we went up to Sacramento a few years ago, we visited most houses in Citrus Heights and many in Elk Grove.  Our church has revisited the towns closest to our church again and again.  While we are doing that, our circle of "going" has enlarged.  We get further out as we continue preaching where we are.  My next personal goal is to visit every house in Lamorinda, which is a valley where highway 24 travels through the towns of Orinda, Moraga, and Lafayette.  I would add to that Piedmont and Canyon.  I know that the gospel has not been preached to those people.

I've written a lot about this, but people have made their commission, "invite," instead of "go."  They think that the commission is inviting unsaved people to church.  It isn't.  It is going and preaching.  If you make the commission, "invite," you change the nature of the commission, and your church will change in nature too.

A part of the problem in fulfilling the Great Commission also relates to "church planting."  The Bible teaches evangelizing.  When you have a gathering of disciples, you get a church.  So-called mission has gotten this out of order.  They start with church planting.  Their goal is to launch a church.  You don't know if a church is there.  You evangelize and if a church starts, it starts.  Sometimes churches are started and the area still never is evangelized.  Never.  The church launchers reached their goal, which was to get a church.  What I'm saying is that they never reach the goal, fulfilling the command, in order to fulfill their goal, which sounds like a good goal, starting a church.  I would doubt in many cases if it is even New Testament church-like, because of this change in the nature of the goal.

A follower of Jesus Christ will produce a follower of Jesus Christ, so if you are not getting followers, you are not getting multiplication.  Exponential growth is faster than addition, so whenever someone believes in Jesus Christ, the commission isn't yet completed.  You must bring that person to a point where he can also make a disciple.  If someone reproduces himself every year and then those two disciples reproduce themselves the next year, that's how exponential growth occurs.  The plan of God is not addition but multiplication.

God is glorified through His methods.  They don't make sense to men.  They weren't supposed to. When they "work," God gets all the credit.  Men take the credit by tweaking the method God has given.  They've thought of something "better," and, meanwhile, what God actually said to do, it doesn't get done.  And some of you readers are a part of it.

I do think it is pathetic, disturbing, and maybe nauseating what superficial stuff passes as important to independent Baptist churches, while they are basically disobedient in getting done what they are supposed to do.  Their beloved programs are more important.  Getting the right name, ya know, Mercy Church, and the platform set-up and the band and the team and all of that.  Meanwhile people go their sweet way without getting preached to.  That is a point A to point B problem.  They are busy sitting at home all day reading theology and then not obeying it.  Come on!

If people who called themselves Christians were fulfilling the Great Commission, the gospel would have already been preached everywhere.  It hasn't, and things are getting worse.  In most cases, I believe it is because of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the Great Commission.  Not only is the gospel being perverted by independent Baptists, but so is the Great Commission.