When the storm hit after Jonah ran from God, the heathen on board were looking for the cause. It was Jonah's fault. The believer. Not the heathens fault.
America is heading for destruction, and it is time for the church to wake up. If you look around at the various denominations, there isn't much hope. Wheat and tares are yoked together, attending church Sunday mornings and R rated movies Sunday night without any concern, with one foot in the world and one foot in the church, and you can't tell them apart. These churches are worldly, carnal, and fruitless. Very few of these are actually saved anyhow.
Without holiness the Bible says, no one will see the Lord. When you use the world to draw the world, you will look like the world. The world needs to see God in you and your church to have any chance they will embrace the Christ of the Bible and get born again. The world does not see much God in the churches today, and if lost folks are comfortable to smoke a joint and rock on with your worship service, that will not help them see their need for something not of this world.
I'm writing to the small remnant where we might make a difference, the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. If you built a church completely on what the Bible says, you would end up with a Fundamental Independent Baptist Church. The problem is most of these today are not modeled after Jesus Christ and the book of Acts, but modeled after a Dr. So and So who built a big church, such as a Dr. Jack Hyles. AW Tozer said true revival will affect the moral climate of the world around you. These churches are big number places, yet their church members and their towns rarely exhibit any sort of holiness. There is mere external conformity and Madison Avenue high pressure sales tactics to boost membership and their is pride over the size and it looks impressive. Yet it fails to impact the world with holiness. It fails to lift up the True and Living God and often lifts up men just as much as Popes get lifted up.
The true Baptists were always separate from Rome, never under influence of a state church. However, after spending 3-4 years in the New Evangelical movement, and going full speed ahead once I found the Independent Baptists, I am afraid if we are going to make a difference, we need to start looking at our planks first, and start turning from our wicked ways.
We still have the torch, but we are slowly picking up some bad habits, and worldly thought processes, and dangerous heresies and if we don't radically amputate them the gangrene will spread and kill the whole movement. And after that friend, there isn't much left.
What can we count on? Hundreds praying at the Ecumenical 9/11 memorial service? The Chapel at Cross Point and the other hard rocking, put your right foot in and shake it all about services? Kingdom Bound? I trow not!
Here are some errors we need to fight, be aware of, and repent of!
1. A big one is our Unquestioning Loyalty Position and elevation of man. There are Pastors I love, but there is a tissue paper of difference between respecting and loving a man of God and worshipping him in place of God. One is church submission and obedience to authority that more often than not, we are being rebellious if we fight God given authority. Yet the other side of the coin is the churches that have their deacons stand up and sit down like trained circus seals and the pastor hands them a drink with the skull and cross bones on it and they drink it to prove their "loyalty". If we see something we disagree with our tendency is to whine about it and run our mouths where we are called to come with a spirit of meekness and approach the leadership. What I am against is the movement that you can't approach the leadership about anything and the ultimate sin is judging. For example, there are multiple pieces of evidence to prove Pastor Hyles had an ongoing affair with his secretary. His son and daughter saw things, those on staff had great concerns, the secretary's husband comments are sound, and on and on. Pastor Hyles son was a repeated adulterer and boasted he would never get caught to a friend of his because he said he has way much more on his dad. Pastor Hyles would look outside his window and look for her to flash the lights in the house and he would drive over there. There was a secret door linking their offices together. On and on, and he wrote a book called Justice that forbid anyone from going "bottom up" to report problems and concerns. You could only go top down. Meaning a lay person had no right to accuse the staff above them about anything or they were automatically sinning. This created more of a cult than a church. Pastor Schapp followed in his footsteps and is in jail now for sexual relationships with a 16 year old girl. Jack Schapp is Pastor Hyles son in law. That is what I mean about unquestioning loyalty.
What I mean, is in theory we are taught to search the scriptures and see if these things are so. In practice, however, we don't expect anyone to have anything bad to say against us. Should we be confronted, though we seem to write off the critic and attack him or blacklist him.
This happens a lot in most Bible colleges and is especially seen in the Hyles Anderson College. Pastor Jack Hyles taught what Benny Hinn teaches today--- if accused at all they use the verses Touch Not God's anointed and Do thy Prophet no harm. Many circles today believe in this elevation of man and this idea that the leader is infallible and above reproach. Many Pastors are humble men and don't go for that sort of thing, but some of that mind set is in our circles, whether it comes from a visiting evangelist or an assistant, or a layman.
It is very confusing where we stand. If we search the Bible and see error, we are not being rebellious many times. If God shows us something, we are supposed to bring it to that leader with a spirit of meekness and reprove and rebuke. However, what I see is those that do what the Bible commands are put down, pushed down, and not selected over men who are Yes men and have that unquestioning position. I can't hold that position and be loyal to the Lord.
2. The big influential men taught a wrong definition of repentance and often times that mixes into our evangelism. Jack Hyles and Curtis Hudson redefined what repentance means, rejecting clear scripture, Webster's 1828 dictionary, and our Baptist forefathers position. They taught that since (from their reasoning) that since unbelief is the only sin that sends a person to hell, then repentance is merely going from unbelief to belief , and repentance is merely a change of mind. True salvation is turning to Christ in true repentance and as you turn to you also immediately and naturally turn away from your idols and sin. You don't stop sinning but you do repent of the sinful nature that is in rebellion against God. You miraculously become a new creature that naturally craves the things of God and naturally can't enjoy the things we once did. Salvation produces a new creature. Period.
3. We often preach against the sinner's prayer, but in practice many folks practice the sinner's prayer. A prayer does not save. Believing a prayer does not save. Reading a hall mark sympathy card does not mean you are sorry. The Bible teaches salvation is Repentance and Faith.
We teach by our actions that salvation is "Pray and Ask the Lord to save you". The sinner's prayer came about during the DL Moody days...the Romans's Road came about from Jack Hyles in 1940ish. Both are shallow, emphasize heaven and the blessings of God in exchange for "admitting you are a sinner", and comes down to a if-you-want-to-go-to-heaven-then pray-this- prayer deal of a lifetime. It appeals to our selfishness and minimizes God's holiness.
It turns the Lord of Lords and King of Kings into a 2 minute get-your-flu-shot just-in-case too-good-to-pass-up marketing gimmick. It makes two fold children of hell!!!!!!!
The reason most of our young people leave church is they are not saved! The reason we lead 100 to the Lord during our latest outreach and not one comes to church is they are not saved!
The reason you say, "I already did that" when someone makes you upset when they challenge your ungodly life with the true Gospel is YOU ARE NOT SAVED!
The reason that church members are getting more worldly and care less and less about the things of God is most of them ARE NOT SAVED!!!!! Make sure you are truly born again!
There are others, but let's work on those 3 first! And then we can go after the lost!
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