June 30, 2004 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Messengers to the recent Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis voted overwhelmingly against a resolution calling for parents to remove their children from public schools and either to home school them or to send them to Christian schools. The vote was taken on July 16, the final day of the conference, and it was rejected by an estimated 70+ percentage of the delegates (“Baptists kill anti-public-school resolution,” WorldNetDaily, June 16, 2004)!

The public school resolution was written by Bruce Shortt and T.C. Pinckney. I don’t know these men or where they stand on other issues, but they are to be commended for their spiritual-sightedness in this matter.

Shortt noted that there was “a parade of SBC leaders and members of the Resolutions Committee speaking vehemently against it.”

Shortt observed, “A lot of these pastors are worried about church mortgages and jobs” and this is why they don’t want to risk alienating the large number of church members that supports the public schools.

MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY

None of this surprises me. I grew up in a Southern Baptist family and attended Southern Baptist congregations until I was a teenager. Most of my family members are staunch Southern Baptists to this day. No one thought it was wrong to send the children from Christian families to public schools, though the influence even then was godless to the extreme and most of the young people, including me, ended up trading Christ for the world. (Of course, that was before the day when you could have the world and Christ, too, via “Christian” rock, “Christian” tattooing, etc. And, yes, I am speaking facetiously, because I know that the Bible says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” 1 John 2:15, and God commands us not to be conformed to the world, Rom. 12:2).

I can testify before the Lord that the greatest single evil influence in my young years was the public school system. I didn’t get much of an education in intellectual disciplines, because the “dumbing down of America” was going full steam ahead in the 1960s, but I got a massive education in worldliness. I made friends that I should not have made and I learned things that I should not have learned.

The Bible plainly warns, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33), meaning that evil associations defile and injure and destroy a godly way of living. How true that is!

The Bible says: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2).

In this light, a public school education is a curse and not a blessing. It does exactly the opposite of what Psalm 1 says we should do. It teaches young people to walk in the counsel of the ungodly and to stand in the way of sinners; and rather than teaching them to delight in God’s Word, it teaches them to sit in the seat of the scornful and to doubt it. Do public schools teach young people to meditate upon God’s Word day and night? No, that is not hardly what they are taught to meditate upon.

I didn’t get saved until I was almost 24 years old, and I will bear the spiritual and moral scars of those lost years to my grave; but I am better off than many of the church kids that I grew up with, because they are still in the world and give little or no biblical evidence that they are born again. Like me, they went through the motions of accepting Christ and becoming church members as children (usually without the repentance that Christ requires, Luke 13:3), but they subsequently spent more time with worldlings than with godly people and as a consequence they went the way of the world.

WE NEED TO BE A LIGHT TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, THEY SAY

Do I hear someone protest that Christians need to be in the public school system as light and salt? My friends, children are children, not evangelists. And very, very few Southern Baptist children make even a pretense of being evangelists in their schools. I find nowhere in the Word of God that parents are to put their children into the hands of unregenerate educators with the hope that those tender young sprouts will perhaps be able to escape being spiritually and morally destroyed in an atmosphere permeated with unbelief and sin so they can perhaps be a little bit of light and salt. God wrote Psalm 1, and that should settle this matter. I realize that some young people attend public school and take a bold stand for Jesus Christ, and I am glad for them; but for every one that does this there are doubtless thousands who are polluted spiritually and morally. I need nothing more than 1 Corinthians 15:33 to substantiate this charge.

BEFORE THE SBC WAS LIBERAL IT WAS WORLDLY

In the 1970s, when the Southern Baptist Convention was inundated with theological modernism at every level, I made the observation that before the SBC was liberal, it was worldly. That was based on firsthand experience, and I have not seen anything in the last 30 years that has changed my mind about the worldly state of the SBC. The situation has only gotten worse.

At best, as a convention, the SBC is lukewarm, and Christ said He would rather that His people be cold than lukewarm. “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16).

WHERE ARE THE PASTORS?

As for the Southern Baptist pastors that I have known, the words of Mr. Shortt ring very true. Why doesn’t the average church member in an SBC congregation understand the danger of sending their children to public schools? The answer is that they are not instructed properly in godly living and separation from the world. And why aren’t they so instructed? The answer is that the pastors aren’t doing their jobs. Generally speaking, with some rare exceptions, they are so busy telling the people what they like to hear and practicing the fine art of “not rocking the boat,” that they have no time to tell them the hard but important things that God wants them to hear.

This is one of the fruits of conventionalism and associationalism. Because of peer pressure, organized associations tend to bring everything down to the lowest common denominator rather than lifting things up to a higher level. Men tend to narrow their message down to those things on which “the brethren” generally agree and they tend to avoid those things that would be controversial. Organized conventions and associations tend to create followers of men more than prophets of God.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

No wonder that it was reported at the 2004 convention in Indianapolis that 10,000 -- yea, TEN THOUSAND -- Southern Baptist congregations reported not even one baptism last year. Not one.

Our children are a precious heritage from God, and we need to train up soldiers for Christ not friends to the world.

Southern Baptists, wake up!!!!

Independent Baptists, take heed!!!!