By the way, I should say that Kent’s emphasis and writing on the local church and the importance of local church unity has been a blessing to me, even though we don’t entirely agree exactly at the application level. It is critical for the local church to be unified, and to present a godly testimony in the world.

I have been in Kent’s church, quite a few years ago (1994???) and I think the church there in El Sobrante is an excellent church, though we wouldn’t see eye to eye on everything. Nevertheless, a good work for God is going on there, souls are being saved and discipled. That’s the ministry, and I am thankful for what is going on under Kent’s leadership.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I really agree with your comment about the position of Kent, verse yours. I really have a hard time setting aside my doctrinal position for fellowship. Sometimes I do, but its not that easy.

Happy camping.

JWM, you really don’t understand the issues we are discussing. You have had your say, you have been pointed to Scripture that speaks to your error, and you refuse to engage it. I won’t give you a platform to continue to display your skewed view of Christianity. You don’t really understand the church or Christian love. I’m not going to engage your comments any further than that.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Thank you for your comment. A couple of responses:

1. Unity is only one aspect of the Christian life. Holiness is another aspect. There are numerous passages that mandate separation unto holiness including separation from other believers for various reasons. If those passages did not exist, you might have a case for your argument of only unity. Since they do exist, your argument fails. See for example 1 Cor 5, Rm 15, 2 thess 3 and others.

2. your interpretation about John the Baptist and David is just that, an interpretation. I have never heard of your interpretation about John the Baptist – that’s not to say no one has ever taught it, you obviously learned it from somewhere. As for David, some commentators say “naked” meant stripping off the outer robes, but still clothed in undergarments. Regardless, their behaviour and their culture was entirely different than ours and is really a red herring coming from you. They were not Christians, their behaviour happened entirely outside the paradigm of the church, and is entirely irrelevant as far as what the New Testament commands the church.

Finally, what the lost need to see is the gospel of Christ dead, buried and risen again to provide redemption for their sins. If it depended on the sorry testimony of the church over the last 2000 years, no one would be saved.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I perceive in essence that being Militant as your descriptive of belief or philosphy takes precidence over your relationship to Christ, the redeemer, the peacekeeper, the unifier.

How can one follow after Christ, who called all believers to unity, and separate oneself from other believers due to philosphical views or interpretation of the fundamentals?

Do you also separate yourself from the lost (who are not fundamentalists), who need the truth in love and deed exampled in their lives by Christians? The lost don’t know from Adam why you have chosen to be separate from those who practice differently than you. Being holy and set apart is necessary, but these are spiritual laws that testify of ones soul. In practical terms, we must show unity to those who claim the word of God as their witness their faith.

In pracitcallity, we must show the lost that we are united by the love of Christ, as believers. How can we testify unity and separate ourselves from all other Christian groups that don’t look like us?

John the Baptist walked around half naked, proclaiming the love of God and our need to be cleansed of sin. David danced in celebration down the street until his clothes fell off, and he was naked and shouting God’s praises.

Somehow, I don’t think these great men of faith would support fundamentalism as you have stated above. How does a fundamentalist reconcile these men of God? Would you call them unacceptable in God’s sight? Many of God’s children do not look like you or talk like you or enjoy the same music for worship, and yet they are no less acceptable in God’s sight. Their souls are saved just the same as yours. Please tell me that you are not judging the souls of Christians due to the difference in philosphy.

Of course we should judge our own behavior as Christians, so the world won’t find blemish is us. Of course we should not be a stumbling block for our brothers and sisters. But, shouldn’t we also cover all relationships with unconditional love and that means accepted and loved into a better understanding of God.

Accepted and loved means bringing truth to all of those we encounter in grace and mercy, as God is the final judge of souls. We can only judge our own behavior lest we be judged and fall prey to the worlds snare.

The lost need to see believers show truth in love, motivated by the infinate love we know from our relationship to the Trinity.

Kent means it, and I think what he means by it is that fundamentalists have to be willing to make some of their doctrines less essential, or second degree, so we can overlook them and maintain fellowship between, say, fundamentalist Presbyterians and fundamentalist Baptists.

I think Kent is looking at this wrong. It is not that we don’t think some doctrines are critical, all doctrines are critical, essential, first degree, primary – whatever word you want. But fundamentalism is about joining in common cause for the purpose of strengthening the church in certain key areas of agreement, while at other times we will go our separate ways as far as promoting Baptist distinctives for example, as against Presbyterian distinctives. I think it is within our mandate as believers to work with others where we can, even though we may differ on other important doctrines.

On a local church level, there definitely needs to be much more unanimity and unity around more than just the core doctrines.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Hi Ellis

I think the term ‘separation’ can be a part of the problem in understanding what we are doing. Separation is an all or nothing word.

I think a better word to use is cooperation, fellowship, or partnership. I won’t be partners with someone going in the opposite direction to me. Or off on some tangent I don’t want to follow. That’s not to say that I write him off as an apostate, but he is going a different direction. I don’t support the direction, so I don’t cooperate. But I might be friendly with him, or have some contacts.

Here is another example. There is a fellow in our town who is orthodox doctrinally as far as I know. We have at times had people leave his church and come to ours. One fellow I didn’t do anything about, but I should have called the other pastor. After a while, this guy became a real problem in our assembly. If I had called the other pastor, we would have been able to perhaps jointly help the fellow to get a bit straighter, no matter which church he ended up in. Another lady started visiting us from the other pastor’s church. I learned my lesson, so this time I called him. He helped me to know where the lady is coming from, he knows what is happening, and there isn’t a potential for hard feelings either way on this.

So my point with respect to other local congregations is not that I totally cut them off, or declare them apostates. But they are going in a different direction and I won’t join with them in cooperative efforts.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I am glad someone else shots 90’s for 9 hole of golf.

Hi Charles

Well, I suppose your big paragraph beginning “other views” is how some view fundamentalism. I suppose there might have been some who shared those perspectives. However, I don’t think that is the way things are done in the vast majority of fundamentalist churches. Most of them are relatively small works, pastored by reasonable men who are trying to build disciples of Christ. They aren’t the big names people hear about. For them, I think the way fundamentalism works is exactly as I describe in my post.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3