November 6, 1997 (first published in O Timothy magazine, Vol. 11, Issue 1, January 1994) (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) -

In October 1993, a meeting was held in Rockville, Maryland, with the theme "Building Bridges to Other Bible-believing Churches." It was attended by Southern Baptists as well as some independent Baptists. Independents Jerry Falwell and Tim Lee joined Edwin Young, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Jerry Vines, former president of the SBC (1989-90).

Falwell was quoted as saying, "I would say we’re a couple years away ... but I don’t think there’s any question that we’re heading toward some major mergers that will probably surprise a lot of people." Tim Lee, an independent Baptist evangelist, claimed, "I firmly believe God has His hand on this event in an unusual way. ... We may not dot our i’s alike and may not cross our t’s alike, but nowhere does the Bible say we must do that."

I, for one, wish Pastor Falwell would join the Southern Baptist Convention. I don’t think he will, and he claims that he won’t, but that is where he belongs. While he claims to be a Fundamental Independent Baptist, he doesn’t act like one. He has long yoked together with Charismatics, Roman Catholics, and Mormons. He invites Catholics to speak in his pulpit and allows "Christian" rock music on the campus of Liberty University. He tried to "save" the degenerate PTL ministry which, with its false doctrine, radical ecumenism, and flesh-pot brand of Christianity, was responsible for confusing multitudes. Recently Dr. Falwell recommended a book by Charles Colson which calls for closer fellowship with the Roman Catholic Church. It is great confusion to claim to be a fundamental Baptist while doing the things that Dr. Jerry Falwell does.

We salute the late Curtis Hutson, editor of the Sword of the Lord, for taking an unhesitating stand against the efforts of some independent Baptist leaders to muddy the waters of Bible separation by calling for fellowship with the Southern Baptist Convention:

In the April 1993 issue of Target, Tim Lee called for further cooperation between Southern Baptists and independents. The move is evidently on, and independent, fundamental Baptist preachers will have to make their own decisions as to whether or not they wish to merge with the SBC.

Speaking at Southwide Baptist Fellowship on Tuesday night, October 5, Dr. Lee Roberson, longtime pastor of the famous Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, said:

"There were certain conditions among Southern Baptists some years ago that led us to the establishment of the Southwide Baptist Fellowship. ... We were Southern Baptists here, and we came out of it and became the Southwide Baptist Fellowship. ... We have had certain conditions and convictions that we stood for and held to. These were important. Listen carefully. The conditions that brought about what we separated from back years ago in that hour are the same today. we came out and became independent and became Southwide Baptist Fellowship. It hasn’t changed a bit!

"I picked up this little note here from one of our papers. Southern Baptists have given their report. They now have 900 women ordained to the ministry among Southern Baptists--900 of them! Now we don’t believe in that at all! We don’t think that is the Word of God--for a woman to be an ordained preacher. ...

"Then there was the lack of standards. Standards were gone among Southern Baptists, and we felt there should be standards, so we came out and have been holding to certain standards of life. We may fail sometimes, but we hold to many things in this hour.

"The same liberalism in colleges and seminaries is found today [in the SBC]. It was there then; it’s there now. It hasn’t changed a particle, not a bit! ...

"Then there is the same lack of fundamentalism in the Sunday School Board in Nashville, Tennessee. It hasn’t changed a particle. The leaders will tell you that themselves. They have the same liberalism, liberal thought, modern thought about many things that we turned away from when we came out to be the Southwide Baptist Fellowship.

"The same lack of Bible-based missionary work is still present among Southern Baptists ... So nothing has changed."

... I [Curtis Hutson], for one, say a hearty "Amen" to everything Dr. Roberson said! Many young independent Baptist preachers are second- and third-generation fundamentalists. Some of them do not understand the issues.

They did not come out of the SBC. They were saved and raised in independent Baptist churches, and in some instances their pastors did not come out of the SBC. They, too, were saved and grew up in independent Baptist churches. But men like Dr. Lee Roberson, Dr. Harold Sightler, and others left the Southern Baptist Convention; and the same reasons they left the Convention years ago still exist today....

Toleration eventually leads to accommodation. Once error is tolerated in the church and allowed to stand side by side with truth, people become more comfortable with the error and with the one who advocates it. This leads to cooperation. It is possible to live with error. ... Soon you reason that the modernist is not much different from you.

The next downward step is contamination. When one becomes intimately involved with the modernist, he gives him the right to proclaim his false teaching in the church. He accepts him as a brother. He does not rebuke him for his error but rather works side by side with him as though he approved of him. He has now been contaminated by the modernist. Of course, he wouldn’t admit it. In fact, he may become angry if someone even suggests that he has changed.

Contamination leads to capitulation, a surrendering of the truth, which is then supplanted by error. The truth is obscured and denied while error is defended and lauded as truth. All of this is done in the name of love.

But the test of love is not our willingness to stay in an unequal yoke with modernists and liberals; the test of love is obedience. Jesus said in John 14:15: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." And one of those commandments is clearly spelled out in 2 Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers."

One cannot be a member of the Southern Baptist Convention without being yoked up with unbelievers. The battle in the Convention today is over unbelievers. The conservatives believe the Bible is the inerrant, inspired Word of God; but there is an element within the Convention, especially in the schools, that do not believe the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of God. So until these liberals are fired and removed from the Convention, one cannot be a member of the SBC without being yoked up with them in clear violation of a scriptural principle. ...

To stay in the SBC is to remain in an unequal yoke with the liberals still serving on the faculties of Southern Baptist schools, and to merge with the SBC is to yoke up with those same unbelievers in clear violation of 2 Corinthians 6:14.

Separation is the distinguishing mark between fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. A man who does not practice, preach and promote ecclesiastical separation--that is, separation from modernists, liberals and unbelievers in religious organizations--cannot rightly be called a fundamentalist. For that reason, no Southern Baptist can correctly be called a fundamentalist. At best, he is only a conservative evangelical.

And merging fundamentalists with evangelicals does not make more fundamentalists, but rather more evangelicals. ...

Someone asked, "What if the Southern Baptist Convention were to get rid of all the liberals and modernists from educational institutions, entities and agencies? Could you then merge with the Convention?" The answer is no--for several reasons. First, because of its church government. We believe in the autonomy of the local church, that every local church should be independent and autonomous. ... There is nothing whatsoever in the Bible about denominations and religious hierarchies. ... The organizational structure of denominations is not taught anywhere in the New Testament ...

Then, too, independents should not merge with the Southern Baptist Convention because of its missions program. ... Keep in mind that the independent Baptists have no organized plan to support missionaries. We have no Lottie Moon offering and no Cooperative Program. Yet they support nearly twice as many missionaries as the entire Southern Baptist Convention, and every dollar given to missions goes directly to missions. ...

Furthermore, independent Baptists should not merge with the SBC because of local church administration. The Bible teaches that the pastor is to be the overseer of the flock. He is to lead the church. Deacons and committees are only there to help the pastor fulfill his vision and burden for the local congregation. Southern Baptist churches tend to be deacon-run churches, where the deacon board hires and fires a preacher almost at will....

In the August 1993 issue of Target, in his "Executive Editorial," [Tim Lee] said regarding his paper, "We are doing our best to put together a quality Christian publication for evangelical fundamentalists." There is no such thing as an evangelical fundamentalist. If one is an evangelical, he is not a fundamentalist. And if one is a fundamentalist, he cannot be an evangelical (Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, Nov. 19, 1993).

While we applaud the efforts of Curtis Hutson and Dr. Lee Roberson to stand against any merging of independent Baptists with the Southern Baptist Convention, we also wish they would take the same stand against the compromise of Bible separation which has gone on in their own Southwide Baptist Fellowship circles for so many years.

I praise the Lord for the hundreds of fundamental Baptist churches represented in Southwide, particularly for those which stand unhesitatingly upon the Authorized Version and which are clear in their separation. I am convinced America would be in much worse shape if it were not for churches such as these.

Even so, Tennessee Temple, which was headed until recent years by Dr. Roberson and which frequently hosts the Southwide meetings, while claiming to be fundamentalist and separatistic, has long fellowshiped with New Evangelicals and with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Warren Wiersbe is a key example of Temple’s fellowship with New Evangelicalism. As the former pastor at Moody Church, as the former director of Back to the Bible, and as a contributing editor of Christianity Today, Dr. Wiersbe has been in the forefront of the New Evangelical movement. Presently he is head of Youth for Christ, which is radically ecumenical and works closely with Roman Catholics in many parts of the world. Each new position Dr. Wiersbe has taken has carried him farther from a fundamental position, yet Wiersbe has spoken at Tennessee Temple and Southwide meetings for many years. As far back as 1976, Wiersbe was invited to speak at Southwide conferences.

As a student at Tennessee Temple in the 1970s, I heard Dr. Wiersbe speak on several occasions. It is a strange thing for a school to claim to be fundamental and separatistic while welcoming New Evangelicals to its pulpit. In the 1980s I wrote to Pastor Don Jennings at Highland Park Baptist Church about this and was told that there is NO contradiction and that Wiersbe WILL continue to speak there! In 1986 I wrote to Dr. Wiersbe and asked why he did not lift his voice to warn about Romanism and Modernism and why he was associated with publications and organizations sympathetic to Rome. He replied, "Quite Frankly, my Brother, I wish some of the brethren would take off their boxing gloves and pick up a towel. Perhaps if people began to wash one another’s feet, there might be more love and unity." This is good advice in regard to getting along with those who are faithful to the Word of God, but it is unscriptural compromise in regard to our dealings with error. God instructs the preacher to rebuke and expose error (2 Tim. 4:1-6). The Apostle Paul mentioned 10 false teachers and compromisers by name in his epistles to Timothy and Titus. Biblical love is not to turn a blind eye toward heresy, and biblical unity has no place for apostates! Sadly, Dr. Warren Wiersbe is an enemy of biblical fundamentalism, and it is confusion for fundamental Baptists to invite him to their pulpits.

Another example of Temple’s fellowship with New Evangelicalism is seen in Highland Park Baptist Church’s annual missions conference. Highland Park is the home church for Tennessee Temple. In 1993 thirty-two mission agencies were represented at the conference, including such New Evangelical organizations as New Tribes Mission, The Evangelical Alliance Mission, and the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

Southwide Baptist Fellowship and affiliated schools and churches such as Tennessee Temple, while never calling for mergers between independent Baptists and the SBC, have fellowshiped closely with certain Southern Baptist men and institutions. SBC Luther Rice Seminary has had a booth at Southwide conferences for several years. A number of Southern Baptist preachers have spoken at Temple. Dr. Robert G. Lee, for example, former president of the SBC and renowned preacher of "Pay Day Someday" fame, spoke frequently at Temple before his death. The Tennessee Temple radio station broadcasts Southern Baptist Charles Stanley’s program. In October 1989, the SBC Broadman Press had a booth at the Southwide conference at Temple. "Literature at this booth advertised books by liberals (e.g., So. Seminary pres. Roy Honeycutt) and the notorious Broadman Bible Commentary!" (Calvary Contender, Oct. 15, 1989).

Is this not sending out an unclear message? Isn’t it wrong to claim to be fundamental and separatistic and opposed to New Evangelicalism and denominationalism while inviting New Evangelicals and denominational men to our pulpits?

If a fundamentalist church or school fellowships with New Evangelical men and ministries, it will become leavened with the philosophy of New Evangelicalism and will lose its Bible militancy. Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon warned, "Complicity with error will take from the best of men the power to enter any successful protest against it."

See "When Was the Southern Baptist Convention Delivered from Liberalism?" in the Southern Baptist section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Web site -- http://www.wayoflife.org/