June 24, 2000 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The Wake Forest Divinity School, which is on the Campus of Wake Forest University and has a fraternal relationship with the North Carolina Baptist Convention, admitted a lesbian to its student body when it opened last fall. Bill Leonard, dean of the school, defended the decision in a meeting of "moderate Baptists" in April. Leonard compared the issue of homosexuality to civil rights for black people. When asked if he considers homosexuality a sin, he replied: "Is homosexuality a sin? That’s for everyone to sort out individually" ("Leonard defends admitting gays to divinity school," Biblical Record, journal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, May 12, 2000). He is wrong. God "sorted that out" long ago. The standard for morality is not what every man thinks, but what the Bible says; and the Bible plainly condemns homosexuality and calls homosexuals to repentance.

The controversy about homosexuality is not new at Wake Forest University. The Wake Forest Baptist Church, which meets in the school’s chapel, voted in November 1998 to "petition God to bless all loving, committed, and exclusive relationships between two people." The church’s pastors, Richard Groves and female preacher Lynn Rhoades, told the press they believe that decision gives them the right to officiate at homosexual "ceremonies." (See "SBC Congregation Asks God to Bless Homosexual Unions," Fundamental Baptist Information Service, November 18, 1998, under the Southern Baptist section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life Literature web site.)

One of the homosexuals who is seeking, with her female partner, to be blessed with a ceremony at Wake Forest Baptist Church is the lesbian student at Wake Forest Divinity School.

The Wake Forest Divinity School had 24 full-time students for its opening. Nineteen of these were women. The students came from various denominational backgrounds, including Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopalian. The faculty includes a Catholic Benedictine priest and a feminist theologian who calls God "our motherly father" (Calvary Contender, Sept. 15, 1999; Oct. 1, 1999).

While the school is self-governing, it has a fraternal relationship with the North Carolina Baptists, though steps are being taken possibly to sever the ties because of the homosexuality issue.

We wonder why the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has waited so long. Not only does the Wake Forest Baptist Church have unrepentant homosexuals as members and deacons, its pastors are modernists who deny the infallible inspiration of the Bible.

Wake Forest Baptist Church’s pastor Richard Groves, in a sermon preached November 15, 1998, said the prophet Isaiah DID NOT write Isaiah 65. He said:

"OK, I know his name wasn’t Isaiah. He was an unknown contemporary of Haggai, whose work we considered last week, a prophet who was called to speak a word from God to the people after they returned from their fifty year exile in Babylon. And it was his misfortune to get a real sloppy editor who somehow tacked his book on to the end of another book, one that we associate with the great prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem, who lived a couple of centuries earlier. The result is that the author who wrote some of the most important passages in the Hebrew Bible, so far as a Christian understanding of Jesus is concerned (the suffering servant image, for example), is now completely unknown to us" (Richard Groves, "Living Toward the Future: Isaiah 65:17-25," Wake Forest Baptist Church, Nov. 15, 1998).

This pastor doubtless learned this heresy at Southern Baptist theological institutions. Though we are told that the teachers at the main SBC seminaries are no longer allowed to hold views of higher criticism, I know for a fact that modernism is still taught in some required textbooks. (See "A Visit to a Southern Baptist Seminary," Feb. 3, 2000, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, available in the Southern Baptist section of the End Times Apostasy Database at the Way of Life web site.)

The book of Isaiah itself professes to be the product of the historical prophet Isaiah. If Isaiah did not write the book, it is a deception and the Jews who promoted it as the writing of Isaiah were strangely deceived about their own history. Further, to claim that the prophet Isaiah did not write the book of Isaiah is to make Jesus Christ and the Apostles into liars. Jesus often quoted from the book and said it was written by Isaiah--not by some unknown group of men (Jn. 12:38-41). In Jn. 12:38-41 Christ quoted from both major sections of the book and said both were written by the same Isaiah. Every time Christ and the Apostles quoted from Isaiah, they did so with the understanding that the book was written by the historical prophet (Mt. 3:3; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:14; 15:7; Mk. 7:6; Lk. 3:4; 4:17; Jn. 1:23; 12:38,39,41; Acts 8:28,30; 28:25; Rom. 9:27,29; 10:16,20; 15:12). This completely destroys the modernistic idea that Isaiah was the product of more than one writer. The choice is obvious: Will we believe the Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles, or will we believe the modern critic?

The pastor of Wake Forest Baptist Church also claims that Isaiah’s prophecy was merely a dream after the fashion of those dreamed by the United Nations.

"It’s a dream, you say. The world isn’t like that, never has been like that, and never will be like that. Of course, it’s a dream. Isaiah dreamed as inspired people in every age dream. In her poem ‘A Brave and Startling Truth,’ which she read on the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, Maya Angelou also dreamed of a future. ... Of course, it’s a dream, but we are shaped by our dreams of the future, and we shape the future according to the way we dream it will be" (Richard Groves, ibid.).

This Southern Baptist pastor thinks the Bible is "inspired" merely like the dreams of pagan United Nations world planners. What wickedness.

The sad fact is that in spite of the conservative renaissance at the national level there are hundreds of congregations affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention which are filled with theological modernism and gross immorality. It is disobedience to the Bible to be yoked together with unbelievers, and if a denominational relationship is not a yoke, I don’t know what is.

See "When Was the Southern Baptist Convention Delivered from Liberalism?"