The Wild Bunch ~ A Testimony of a Baptist with Independent Tendencies

Personally, for me, it was in fact a Independent Baptist man that led me to God and the saving power of his Son Jesus Christ. It was a Independent Baptist that showed me a clear presentation. It was the Independent Baptist that showed me the gospel to where I clearly understood it and grasped it’s significance.  The Independent Baptist taught me and showed me the truth and infallibility of the King James Bible.  

On a practical note, an Independent Baptist preacher taught me the invaluable definitions of balance.  An Independent Baptist showed me the importance of individual liberty.  I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for all the Independents Baptist in the sense of the truth and certain positions they have maintained for decades. The wars they have fought and the battles they have won, yeah, I can claim their name to certain extents, knowing their true history.  And I am proud for it.  

I remember being introduced to the first “real” Christian men I ever met.  They were men in a small Independent Baptist Church, 50-70 strong.  An eager bunch to say the least.  All sermons where edifying, instructive and admonishing.  The teaching was verse by verse. About 7 guys in all were all allowed opportunities to preach from time to time, very rare among pastors today to be so selfless with their pulpit.  The song leader was a charismatic man that loved the old time hymns, thank God I was exposed to true song and worship at infancy in salvation so I did not carried up in praise music and charasmania. 

The Independent Baptist were also the first REAL Christians I think I ever met outside of my own family.  It was the first evidence of real Christianity that I ever saw in my entire life.  I was 16 at the time.  I had also grown up my entire life in the Bible belt town of Columbia, SC.  Pastors would kick me, the skateboarder off the steps of their church, but never tried to build dialogue or relay the gospel to me.

These men loved God sincerely and genuinely, those dear people, they loved that old book.  They loved preaching and many of those men to this day still do.  They loved singing and fellow-shipping.  I mean, clean stuff.  Hymns, no mumbo jumbo, just classic old songs from the 17 and 18th century. Get togethers and such, BBQs, just hanging out with like minded decent people. Laughter, love, joy, peace, times of my life I wanted never to end. 

"Hi, can I give you something to read please?"

Here I go with another flip side observation.  “Oh you are just picking all the things that used to believe in and do and preaching against them now?” Well, thats not really the case but if you want to believe that what do I care. Sorry!  

I can’t help it.  It’s just my makeup I guess.  It is my knack to teach doctrine through disproving traditions and many human elements that have slipped in under the radar into our ways of service and worship.

Now, lets all get together and go pass out some tracts.  Have you ever heard or participated in such events with your church? There is a danger with such things as gospel tracts, tract blitzes and track bombings.  

I’m not opposed to tracts, but there is the danger of people handing out a million papers to a million people and never opening their mouth to actually witness.  I have seen tracts evolve from a form of opening conversation to more of a “just read this and God bless” and many go on there merry way with their conscience appease that they did something for God. It’s all very Catholic of us isn’t it.  The same as a confessional crutch.  I know people who feel miserable about themselves unless they fulfill some daily or weekly quota. 

In large groups, public outreach operations, especially amongst youth groups there is  this tendency to “one-up” the other that leads more to one becoming a nuisance more than a testimony.  I have seen this hundreds of times in several different places.  Gospel tracts used in such manners turn in to gospel trash.   

A Convoluted Commission

The fact remains is that men have long made it a practice to use the word, and I cannot stress enough how serious I mean to say, “use the word of God” for private agendas and to further their private kingdoms.  For the common good or whatever lies they have to tell themselves these days, many just continue on, examining others, never examining themselves.  Men will privately interpret passages for private reasons.  It is a common practice displayed among decent and devious men  alike and has been in the works since the time of Christ. 

Missionaries and preachers have long claimed unfounded and loose interpretive callings for ministerial nonsense and money grabbing shakedowns by way of using the Great Commission. They have long found, as the definition of commission states, their doings, performing, perpetuating, sending, act of entrusting, duty; and it is now their proper authority and warrant for exercising certain powers, administrations, and duties in the Great Commission passages.  

These passages in the gospels have been used for centuries to solicit services and funds from among Christian bodies.  Sure their is gain, but no one ever discusses the other spectrums of disorder. To use these passages to solicit service, or even funds and offerings is unscriptural and dangerously close to adding to his word.  

In many cases now, I can only see it as defraudation or using guile and gimmicks to obtain an desired affect.  By applying a teaching or doctrine to these scriptures, then saying they are directly for the body of Christ is adding to the doctrinal position of the passage.  To do so, one must ignore the scriptural integrity of Gods book.  There is a very specific reason for men to deny that there is any disorder.

You will see variations of this in every evangelistic, Baptist church you can find. It is the big idea that is fully entrenched in well fortified Baptist traditions and preserved by some mafia like omerta! It is why there is never a real discussion or theological sit down over it.  Men will look at you like a two headed dragon just for suggesting this may be an off base position. They act this way because the great commission is the prominent “big idea” that many Fundamentalist, and Evangelical, Bible Believing Christians have in their minds for the reasons for doing much of what they do.  Who would ever dare question it right?

The Purpose of the Church

Before I talk about this one, let me say that I feel uncomfortable doing so. Maybe I am just going through some weird transitional phase in all of my doctrinal thinking and processing.  But the whole point of  "silent platform" is to have a place to talk about such things.   

What is the purpose of the church?  Well, I have been told emphatically numerous times the answer to this; I just have yet to find the scriptural support to back it up as emphatically as others.  Maybe it is my error.  Maybe I am in the wrong here on this topic.  

"The purpose of the church is to win souls".  "The purpose of the church it to win the lost to Christ".  This all sounds good! This all sounds right doesn't it.  What Christian would hear this statement in a public setting and disagree?  Maybe 1 out of 100, maybe more, maybe less?  Look, I don't disagree with leading a man to the Lord Jesus Christ in the least, but is it the sole purpose of the body of Christ?

I used to think this way. But is this really our purpose?  The church, the body of Christ, the assembly of brethren, what is the purpose for existence?  In the Pauline Epistles, it is much more about building a working body then saving the world.  I know how that sounds to most Christians, and I know how hard it is for some of you to hear that but this is extremely important to understand.  

I am to the point of seeing this so strongly now I don’t understand how people can not see as much as they claim to read.  Its about giving him Glory.  So do we witness to the lost?  Of course.  It is a role we can all play in adding to the body of Christ, but it is not our sole reason for being.  

The body IS comprised of all people who were all at one point lost.  I say that to say again, of course I believe in winning the lost!  What Christian doesn’t want to see others have what they found in Christ?  It should be natural.  You truly don’t understand it until you are in HIM.  

"What if it's the Pastor that is the Heretic?"

Heretic~A person under any religion, but particularly the christian, who holds and teaches opinions repugnant to the established faith, or that which is made the standard of orthodoxy. In strictness, among christians, a person who holds and avows religious opinions contrary to the doctrines of Scripture, the only rule of faith and practice.

I listed this definition to prove a point.  The established faith is in the word of God.  It’s in Paul’s gospel.  The gospel of the grace of God was revealed to him.  The inner workings and administrations were revealed to Paul from Christ. It was by the order of Christ. If we operate outside that umbrella, we are heretic’s are we not?  If we hold and teach opinion contrary to the established faith, the faith Paul, Peter, Jude, and James wrote of, we are heretics!

Titus 3:10~A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;

When most people think of withdrawing from heretics, or others, it is usually because of false doctrine, perversions of the gospel message, gross sin, or many other unruly things. But sometimes, believers must withdraw for other reasons.  When most think of heretics they have a picture in their mind but they would never think their own pastors, or those they run with as heretics.

For reasons that may be more apparent than you may think.  What if men lie and speak not the truth? Are we not to withdraw them?  We have every right according to scriptures to withdraw and separate from men who hold not to the Pauline Epistles, and the gospel, doctrine, tradition, and commandments found therein. We have every right to depart from disorderly men.  Let them know you love them, pray for them, and walk on.  Why is this so difficult for us.

"Unto Repentance" and "Unto Salvation"

The phrase John the Baptist used is, “unto repentance” and you only see this phrase show up one other place in the word of God and it is dealing directly with a Jew living in a future tribulation which is followed by a Kingdom reign that has the Lord Jesus Christ reigning a thousand years on Earth, with Israel as the apple of his eye.

If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.  Hebrews 6:6 

It is vital to note that Paul never used the phrase “unto repentance”.  It’s always “unto salvation” with him!  These defining and separating phrase, “unto repentance and “unto salvation” are important to noticing the distinction. Here are some examples of “unto salvation”.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:9-10

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:16

Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:5

It is simply not the same message or associated with the same gospel.  Paul’s gospel and the gospel preached in the Gospels are just as separate as the law and grace, though both are concerning Christ. The gospel preached in the gospels was a gospel of repentance.  It was unto repentance.  The one that Believers preach is the gospel of grace, the one that Paul taught the collective Christian body of his day.

Repent or Die!

Before I get started on this hot button issue among Baptist preachers, teachers and theologians, let me say 2 things to establish somethings.  One, as respectfully as I can say it, I don’t care what C.H. Spurgeon or any other Church fore father said on this issue about repentance being essential or necessary for salvation. He ain’t the Pope man! 

I don’t know him.  He is not my friend, nor any other dead men from his era.  I have no loyalty to him, so I don’t hang my hat on what he or any other man say.  He is not my church father on this issue of repentance and neither are you pastors out there preaching it to strongly! You men can take the great Baptist positional quotes you use to bolster your positions all you want.  The matter is, “What saith the Lord?” We will look closely at it.

Secondly, No man living today should be acting or mimicking any way shape or form actions or even messages of Ezekiel, John the Baptist, or in some cases, Jesus Christ himself.  Yes, even Jesus.  Some of you don’t believe that. No man alive today standing behind any pulpit or on a street corner should be preaching like the prophets or focusing on certain things that the prophets focused on. 

This repentance theology, that has creeped in, is also bordering on the edge of a heresy, called “sinless perfection”.  Say a man repents of all their sins believing in the Lord as a preacher would tell them and as many preach but then what happens when they return to their sins?  

Now some would say here, “Oh, you know what we mean, and we don’t really believe that they need to repent of ALL their sins…”.  Then cut it out and quit saying it.  Quit preaching it so incessantly. If you have to defend your position constantly, it may not be attacks from the brethren, it may be God trying to show you something.  This repentance position is weak.

Quit trying to fool yourself and your people into thinking you have some mystical, mythical higher calling then them to tell the world and the people around you to repent of all their transgressions and abominations.