Now That’s What I’m Talking About

JD Greear has a post entitled What I am praying to see in the SBC: the Conservative Resurgence Task Force of the SBC

Things Not Brought Out When Glorifying The Conservative Resurgance Pt. 3/Should Christians Battle Each Other

First Corinthians 13 was written to the church of Corinth who was in the midst of a heated battle that was splitting the church apart. There were predominately three groups: The Libertines who had a radical view of Christian freedom, believing that the believer could do anything because of the grace of God. There were the Ascetics who developed a very rigid view of Christian discipline, and the Ecstatics, who believed that the Christian life should be manifested through joy and celebration. But their celebrations were over the top and went to far. Then there was the fourth group who wanted peace and were not a part of any of the groups. They simply wanted to go to church, learn, worship in peace.

Paul was saying that all the groups were right yet all were wrong. Paul was for Christian freedom, he brought this out in the book of Galatians, Romans 14. He believe in walking holy and in disciplining ourselves. He also believed in the joy of our salvation and enjoying God. The problem is that all of them believed these things at the exclusion of the other, and all of them took it further than scripture does. They expected everyone else to believe and experience God their way. As a result there was conflict so deep that it was causing division, it became a verbal knock out drag down fight. Paul was saying that they were all wrong because none of them had the whole picture(looking into a mirror darkly).

Paul was teaching them the error in their thinking and in their behavior. 1 Corinthians 13 was written to show the church of Corinth how Christians are to behave toward those they disagree with. It is a mark of a true born again Christian. Love is patient, Love is kind etc. Arrogance, or there is no one right but me has no place in the Christian life or in the church. This is what kills most churches.

Following 1 Corinthians 13 and given that it was addressed to the church of Corinth during a huge battle, how does the CR fit into this passage, and what do you believe it says about the CR?

The world fights, we are to be a model for the world and how are we going to be a model, showing that Christianity is the only way, the right way, when we are no different than the world both in our battling and in our methods. It makes us nothing more than hypocrites, and no wonder the world mocks us and turns away. We offer them the same thing they already have, they see no difference.

I submit that until we swallow our pride, admit the wrongs that were done publicly, we will continue to lose people and lose our effectiveness. After all, the world loves a good fight, and the only time we get attention from the media or from the world is when we are in battle against something. I think it’s time to change. Love is what marks us as children of the King. And until we practice love, we are being disobedient to the very scriptures we supposedly fought for.

Things Not Brought Out When Glorifying The Conservative Resurgence Pt. 2: Truth Or Fiction, Chronological Timeline Of The Takeover

1976: Paul Pressler, a Houston judge, and Paige Patterson, then
president of Criswell College in Dallas, met in New Orleans and
planned a political strategy to elect a president who would nominate
like-minded people to the Convention’s Committee on Committees.
This Committee would nominate like-minded people to the Committee
on Nominations. This second committee would nominate likeminded
trustees and directors to Southern Baptist agencies and institutions
who would hire only like-minded staff members. Pressler
called this strategy “going for the jugular.” Fundamentalist candidates
have won the Convention presidency every year since 1979.
By early 1989 nearly every one of the SBC boards had a majority of
Takeover people on it.
(In 1998: the same Takeover strategy was used successfully to Takeover
the Missouri Baptist Convention. Along the way it was also
used in Georgia and Kentucky.
(In North Carolina, Fundamentalists secured control of the state convention’s
Board of Directors and its powerful Executive Committee,
but the convention-related agencies and institutions have so far
avoided a Fundamentalist Takeover of their boards of trustees.
(Other state conventions have more peacefully transitioned “from
free to subjected” — Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina,
and Tennessee.
(The strategy failed in Virginia and Texas where Fundamentalists
then set up new state conventions.)
1984: The SBC voted in Kansas City to adopt a strongly worded resolution against women in church leadership roles “because man
was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.”
1987: The president of Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest,
North Carolina, resigned after the trustees voted to hire only faculty
members who follow their interpretation of the Baptist Faith and
Message.
1987: The SBC voted in St. Louis to adopt a report from “The Peace
Committee” that had been set up in 1985.
1988: The Baptist Faith and Message became a creed for hiring new
staff members rather than a guideline — a stark deviation from historical
Baptist roots.
1988: At the SBC Convention in San Antonio, a resolution was
passed critical of the cardinal Baptist belief in the “priesthood of the
believer” and “soul competency” and elevated the pastor to the position
of authority in the church he serves. W. A. Criswell told a group
of pastors that “the man of God who is the pastor of the church is the
ruler.”
1990: Roy Honeycutt, president of the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, was accused by a twenty-five-year-old new trustee of “not
believing the Bible.” A new president, Al Mohler, was appointed in
1993 and hailed as “a hero of SBC Fundamentalism.”
1990: Al Shackleford and Dan Martin of the Baptist Press, the official
news service of the SBC, were fired for “persecuting” the Fundamentalists
in their news coverage. Don McGregor, editor of the
Baptist Record of Mississippi, wrote: “Today we have seen the final
destruction of freedom of the press among Southern Baptists.” Immediately
the Associated Baptist Press was established to offer freeflowing,
objective, and accurate news coverage.
1991: At their October meeting, the Foreign Mission Board trustees
voted to defund the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon,
Switzerland, thus breaking a contract the SBC had with the seminary.
Parks, president of the Foreign Mission Board, resigned under pressure.
In his thirteen years as president, missionaries entered forty
new countries with a total of 3,918 missionaries.
1992: Lloyd Elder, president of the Sunday School Board, resigned
under pressure and was replaced by a Fundamentalist Texas pastor,
Jimmy Draper. A total of 159 employees retired (voluntarily or involuntarily)
in November 1992 alone.
1994: Russell Dilday, president of Southwestern Seminary in Fort
Worth for fifteen years, was fired abruptly and trustees changed the
locks on the president’s office immediately, thus denying him access.
The day before, these same trustees gave Dilday a favorable job performance
evaluation. These trustees sent 40,000 letters to pastors and
directors of missions to explain their reason for firing Dilday. They
said he failed to support the Takeover in the Convention and that he
“held liberal views of the scripture.” The Seminary faculty refuted
all these charges against Dilday.
1997: In October a forty-year staff member was fired at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary for writing a private letter to the
President of the SBC disagreeing with a statement he had made
while speaking in chapel. Also in October 1997, a professor of systematic
theology at Southwestern Theological Seminary was relieved
of his teaching duties because he “voiced dissent about actions of the
administration of the institution.” Obviously there is still no room for
diversity or disagreement.
1998: In June, Paige Patterson was elected president of the SBC
without opposition. The man who helped plot the Takeover strategy
of the Southern Baptist Convention was now its leader. Jerry Falwell,
a long-time critic of Southern Baptists, attended his first SBC
Convention as a messenger along with others from his church in
Lynchburg, Virginia. Falwell has become the most visible SBC
spokesperson. Also the SBC amended the Baptist Faith and Message
statement by adding a wife is to “submit herself graciously” to her
husband.
2000: The SBC adopted a new Baptist Faith and Message statement.
It eliminated the preamble that had been part of the 1963 statement.
This version, used as a creedal statement by SBC agencies, elevates
the Bible to a position above that of Jesus himself and downplays the
doctrines of priesthood of each believer and local church autonomy.
It is now used as a creedal statement by SBC agencies.
2002: Jerry Rankin and the IMB trustees undermined missionary
morale by requiring them to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.
2004: SBC withdrew as a member of the Baptist World Alliance.
2005: The SBC voted to discontinue its boycott of Disney.

*The Southern Baptist Convention Takeover(A Brief History, Fourth Edition)

Is this timeline truth or fiction. If fiction, where is it fiction? What is wrong with the methods used? What is right about the methods used?

It Hurts

It hurts me when I read or hear of someone who has died and I know they did not have Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It gnaws on me that they are now spending eternity in hell without a way out. It makes me want to believe in purgatory or Universalism, although I cannot accept either because scripture says differently.

RC Sproul writes this about hell:

We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell.

Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use the word lightly may be a halfhearted human attempt to take the concept lightly or to treat it in an amusing way. We tend to joke about things most frightening to us in a futile effort to declaw and defang them, reducing their threatening power.

There is no biblical concept more grim or terror-invoking than the idea of hell. It is so unpopular with us that few would give credence to it at all except that it comes to us from the teaching of Christ Himself.

There have been many speculations as to what hell is. Some say it is fire and brimstone, burning eternally, some say it is separation from God, while others, such as RC Sproul say that God will eternally be there in wrath and judgment. All are horrible.

I agree with RC Sproul in that if the fire and gnashing of teeth is a symbol, that is worse than the symbol.

If we truly think about people that we know,love, and admire, going to hell without Christ, maybe that would spur us to begin to live the Great Commission Resurgence, and to begin to prayerfully give the Gospel to anyone and everyone.

I have gone through the heartache of knowing those who have died without Christ. Some in my family. Friends. It is agony knowing that I will not have the opportunity to give them Christ.

I also know that God in His Sovereignty will make opportunities available, if not through me, then through someone else, for those I have not been able to reach.

Reading through the deaths of celebrities these past few weeks has caused me to pause, as I am burdened that those who have died did not have Christ as their Lord and Savior. I don’t want to see another lost soul die without Christ.

Think and read about hell this week, and no matter your view of what hell is like, think about the lost who are dying daily. There are no more opportunities for them. How many more do we want to see go to hell?

Think about this as some are turning the CRR into a Calvinist vs. anti-Calvinist issue. Focusing on whether we drink alcohol in moderation or abstain. While this is being focused on, there are those who are dying without Christ and going to hell. That is the bottom line. What is being discussed is folly. So, think about hell this week. Then, maybe our perspectives will begin to change.

Believe me, Satan would much rather you focus on the non-essentials. He would like that very much. So far, we seem to be pleasing him. And by all means, don’t let gifted women, or anyone you disagree with theologically among Southern Baptists join in your evangelistic efforts, because that is just less people he has to worry about giving the good news.

Is This Story True?

I would like to ask anyone who may know if this story I ran across concerning the firing of Al Shakleford and Dan Martin during the time of CR is true.

It seems even now, those who I would not believe are attempting to silence some of us, are now attempting to silence us, and I as a Southern Baptist, have too many questions in my investigation of issues to be silenced, no matter what means are used to try and accomplish the silencing.

Can anyone confirm or deny this story?

I ask because the Conservative Resurgence of the past is being so lauded, and I have found so many disturbing things in the methods used, that as I read this I have to verify its truth.

It seems that a secret meeting was held, with armed guards at the door carrying loaded guns. If this is true, then how can we call these years glory years, and how can we in all good conscience as Christians say this is right?