[The following material is from O Timothy magazine, Volume 12, Issue 4, 1995. David W. Cloud, Editor.This material cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites without permission from the author. Any articles which are redistributed by e-mail or print must be left intact and nothing must be removed or changed, including these informational headers. All rights are reserved. O Timothy is a monthly magazine. Annual subscription is US$20 FOR THE UNITED STATES. Send to Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org. FOR CANADA the subscription is $20 Canadian. The Way of Life web site is located at http://www.wayoflife.org/]

INDEPENDENT BAPTISTS JOINING SBC

Jerry Falwell and Tim Lee in recent years have often platform-shared with So. Baptist leaders and sought to build bridges between So. Baptists and independent Baptists. Now the March 15 [1994] Indiana Baptist reports an SBC study group's recommendation of "a plan to reach independent churches of like mind ... and invite them to join the SBC." SBC President H. Edwin Young said: "There are literally thousands of independent Baptist churches that are more Baptist than a lot of us. ... Their pastors are lonely people. The days of bitterness that we felt so many years from all the independents ... is generally over." Young said he has met with 300 to 400 of these pastors during his two years as SBC president and, "Many of them are already coming in, in a considerable number, and I think we've only just begun to see this happening in our denomination. They like where we are, they like where we're going and, really, they're ready to come home" (Calvary Contender, Apr. 1, 1994).

Increasingly Independent Baptists can be divided into two categories: Fundamental Independent Baptists who practice biblical separation and who are militant for the truth, and Evangelical Independent Baptists are characterized by the same type of soft, neutral attitude as New Evangelcials. Interestingly, the latter are the ones most sympathetic to the critical Greek text and the modern versions.

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/