866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
What I meant was that I want to help divide the sound from the unsound. I was talking about biblical separation. I was not talking about carnal division. I was talking about biblical division.
That is my goal today more passionately than ever, because I know so much more about the deep compromise that is permeating Ind. Baptists and the compromise grows larger and deeper with each passing decade. If ever there was a time for sound Ind. Baptists to put on their separation hat and fly the separation flag, it is today! If there is no clear division between the remnant who are obeying God’s Word and the compromisers who aren’t, between the spiritual and the worldly, between the obedient and the disobedient, between the true disciples of Christ and the pretenders, all will go down the same drain that feeds into “evangelicalism” and from there to the “broader church” with all of its gross sins and heresies.
When churches get together in conferences such as the annual National Baptist Fellowship in Australia, blessings can happen but the potential for the furtherance of sin and error is greater than the potential for blessing because of the mixed multitude aspect. God’s people can be stirred by the right preaching of God’s Word in a mixed multitude, but if they go back to wishy washy, lukewarm, worldly, compromising churches, whatever revival was experienced will be quashed.
Some have boasted that the NBF meeting in 2023 was attended by 600. That’s the same old pragmatic “big numbers” junk thinking that has been a major error among Ind. Baptists since J. Frank Norris and Jack Hyles. Let’s forget numbers and consider quality. It would be a good education to somehow take an effectual survey of the 600-member crowd, beginning with the pastors, to see where things really stand doctrinally, spiritually, and morally. We know that Ind. Baptists today are a pretty sorry mixed multitude overall. I have discussed this with a great many preachers. From my perspective, a big majority of them are extremely weak (not a small minority) and should not be considered New Testament churches. They would not be considered New Testament churches by the Baptists of old (we only have to go back to the 19th century). They don't stand for anything; they are moving rapidly toward an evangelical position; they are playing with contemporary music; they are frightfully shallow in Bible knowledge; they aren’t careful enough about baptism and church membership; they are largely uneducated in the major issues facing God’s people today; they are weak in separation; the pastors are more sports minded, etc., than Bible minded. These churches know little to nothing about true pilgrim Christianity. They are not building strong Christian families that can raise up a godly seed. (A church's real character is reflected in the families and the youth; it is a biblical test.) In these churches, a young person sold out to Jesus Christ is either a rarity or non-existent. In a great many of them, the youth are largely gone. Typically the men are not the spiritual heads of the homes and the women are not keepers of the home. These churches are lukewarm at best, and lukewarm is no small thing; Christ hates it. They don’t warn; they don’t like warnings; and they criticize warners. The words “earnestly contend for the faith” might as well be a foreign language. A pastor that is a warrior for the truth of God’s Word is extremely rare.
I know Buddy Smith, one of the speakers at the Australian conference this year, pretty well. He ignored Pastor Simeon Western’s well-documented, gracious warning about the 2024 NBF. Pastor Smith used to promote my ministry. In fact, he used to warn about the NBF meetings. Pastor Smith is considered a strong man with a sound church, but it is a facade. When I preached a youth conference in Sydney in 2016, I first preached at a youth meeting jointly hosted by Pastor Smith’s church and another one. I was shocked! His youth leader was a wishy-washy new evangelical in thinking; the youth leader’s wife was dressed extremely immodestly as a terrible example for the youth; my preaching was not well received by that worldly crew. They were not serious Bible students and don’t love separation; they were there for fun and games; but they were the product of those churches. When I confronted the pastor, he broke friendship with me. He claims that I don’t understand the battle in Australia and how difficult it is for a church to find workers and how they must do the best they can with weak people, but as a pioneer missionary in a place much harder than Australia I understand all of that. Further, what I understand or don’t understand is not the issue. The church is Christ’s, not mans, and the Word of God is the Word of God, and we have no right to modify and soften and compromise God’s standards for pragmatic reasons.
Pastor Simeon Western’s carefully documented, gracious warning about the 2024 National Baptist Fellowship can be found at the following link -
https://baptistexpositor.com/2024/07/16/a-letter-of-warning-re-nbf-2024/
In over 50 years of ministry, I have learned very well, and to my distress, that the majority of Ind. Baptists are pragmatists and traditionalists, not Biblicists; they are man-centered rather than Christ-centered. At least, that is what I have observed from my own experience and reading.
For some reason, some preachers want to appear to be strong; they put on a strong facade at times; but it is not what they really are, and when they have an opportunity to speak out on an important issue, they either keep silent or they take the weak side of things and tend to attack the messenger rather than the error he is exposing.
Further, preachers who were once warriors for the truth have given up the battle.
Pastor Smith is an example. In his former Heads Up! magazine, Jan. 6, 2012, he wrote the following:
“In Australia, forty years ago, pastors gathered together to comfort, encourage and deepen one another's walk with the Lord. The gatherings became addictive and grew and acquired a life of their own. The spirit of the age imparted an inertia, a momentum of pragmatism. No longer did the fellowship confront its culture.
“Instead, the new leaders gave it a new watchword. Conform. Conform to win them. The gates were opened wider and wider. Anyone and everyone was welcomed in. Textual critics, Hillsong music and theology, Augustine and all his deformed offspring, Ruckman and Co., Riplinger and all her husbands (!), Mighty Men (?), Purpose Drivelled pastors, Schaap and his books, and Sexton's IBFI. All are welcome!
“Pastor Charles Keen recently wrote, ‘We need to develop some ecumenicalism within the parameters of fundamentalism.’ He was only verbalising what had been going on in pastors fellowships for years. I have observed the same trend in the Baptist Union, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, The World Baptist Fellowship, The Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, The General Association of Regular Baptists, Southwide, the IBFI, and the IBFA here in Australia. The National Baptist Fellowship (Australia) is moving in the same direction.
“All pastors fellowships become ecumenical as they drift away from their founding principles” (Heads Up!, Jan. 6, 2012).
Twelve years later, Pastor Smith is preaching at the NBF.
The battle hasn’t changed; preachers have changed. God’s truth is under attack as never before. Who will stand up and be counted? Who is on the Lord’s side?
We need warriors for the truth. Where are the young preacher warriors that the old timers have trained to take their place in the battle? There should be a large cadre of them.
In the early 1980s, I wrote to Warren Wiersbe and asked how he could be associated as an editor with Christianity Today in light of all of its great compromise and heresies, and he replied that we need to take off the gloves and pick up a towel. I rejected that counsel as a young missionary, and I reject it even more emphatically today. It is time to put on the gloves for fighting and pick up a towel of service; it is time to build up and to fight. Like Nehemiah. we need to wield the sword and the trowel (Ne. 4:17-18).
Warren Wiersbe was a New Evangelical through and through, and since his thinking reflects that of a large number of Ind. Baptists, they must also be New Evangelicals.
At about the same time, I corresponded over a period of a couple of years with David Otis Fuller, defender of the Greek Received Text and the King James Bible, and he concluded each communication with, “The battle is getting hotter and hotter, and I like it better and better”! Dr. Fuller’s fight cost him many preacher friends and brought slanders upon his head, but he was not afraid of the battle for truth.
As laborers together with God, may He help us raise up warriors for the faith, both men and women, in these evil times.
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Ti. 4:7).
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Co. 15:33).
“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
- Receive these reports by email
- www.wayoflife.org
______________________
Sharing Policy: Much of our material is available for free, such as the hundreds of articles at the Way of Life web site. Other items we sell to help fund our expensive literature and foreign church planting ministries. Way of Life's content falls into two categories: sharable and non-sharable. Things that we encourage you to share include the audio sermons, O Timothy magazine, FBIS articles, and the free eVideos and free eBooks. You are welcome to make copies of these at your own expense and share them with friends and family. You may also post parts of reports and/or entire reports to websites, blogs, etc as long as you give proper credit (citation). A link to the original report is very much appreciated as the reports are frequently updated and/or expanded. Things we do not want copied and distributed are "Store" items like the Fundamental Baptist Digital Library, print editions of our books, electronic editions of the books that we sell, the videos that we sell, etc. The items have taken years to produce at enormous expense in time and money, and we use the income from sales to help fund the ministry. We trust that your Christian honesty will preserve the integrity of this policy. "For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward" (1 Timothy 5:18). Questions? support@wayoflife.org
Goal:Distributed by Way of Life Literature Inc., the Fundamental Baptist Information Service is an e-mail posting for Bible-believing Christians. Established in 1974, Way of Life Literature is a fundamental Baptist preaching and publishing ministry based in Bethel Baptist Church, London, Ontario, of which Wilbert Unger is the founding Pastor. Brother Cloud lives in South Asia where he has been a church planting missionary since 1979. Our primary goal with the FBIS is to provide material to assist preachers in the edification and protection of the churches.
Offering: Offerings are welcome if you care to make one. If you have been helped and/or blessed by our material offerings can be mailed or made online with with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or Paypal. For information see: www.wayoflife.org/about/makeanoffering.html.