Source: http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2014/03/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:37:25+00:00

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I want to allow this post to stand, but my heart felt apologies to the man whose name I thought was Paul J., because I was told that the quote below was his. I was wrong not to have made sure. He may not even know his name was up for 2-3 hours. I've removed his name and inserted the rightful owner of the comment, whom I actually don't know, but the message stands.
What is valuable? To start, eternal value far outweighs temporal value. Paul wrote that bodily exercise profited little, but godliness was great gain. Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things, temporal things, would be added. What is of eternal value? This is simple, but stay with me. Only God, the Bible, and the souls of men are eternal. Of those three, we've got the Bible to judge whether something is eternal.
With that being said, for awhile the Bible hasn't been of chief value to fundamentalists. What is more important, and you reading know it, is whether something is bigger or not. Second to that is what kind of degrees or credentials someone has. As you read those two and you start thinking about who in the Bible was similar to that, you might think the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin or apostate Israel. You would be right. Whenever something is great in the Bible, it is someone keeping the commandments of God. When it is bad, it is someone doing what he wants, no matter how successful it might seem.
For instance, among the Old Testament kings, you had those who were great at building up the defenses in the further regions, but did little to sustain the worship of Israel. They aren't said to be any good. You've got the ones who did that which was right in the sight of the Lord and they're great. Disobeying God brought kings down. Obeying Him resulted in blessing.
I've seen several posts from this individual over the past few weeks and am wondering why SI feels what he has to say is important? Out of the hundreds of blogs why is this one that gets represented? It doesn't seem like he has and credentials to merit that. Small church in the backwoods of Maine, no educational credentials listed for jr or sr.
There is the extent of evaluation of the article. Why is anything that anyone says important? According to Paul J., it is obvious -- why?
If you are a fundamentalist (and probably an evangelical), then you feel something is important because it comes from the pen, the word processor, or the mouth of someone with meritorious credentials, which happens to be someone with educational credentials, who pastors a big church in an urban area. Correct me if I misunderstood what Paul J. said.
Question: Is that why God knows that anything is important? First, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says that the one who sows and waters is nothing, in essence irrelevant. Paul J., of course, is saying that Bobby Mitchell is irrelevant. We can surmise that Paul J. would say that Mitchell would be relevant, important, worth listening to, if he had advanced degrees and a big church in an urban area. Where is that in the Bible?
I've preached through 2 Corinthians almost twice now (I'm into chapter 13 next week). Paul J's criticism sounds identical to the false teachers at Corinth who Paul defends himself against for many chapters, and especially the last two. They said Paul wasn't worth listening to because he lacked in credentials. I'm not going to get into the details, but the false teachers would have accredited the same credentials that Greek philosophers would have touted, bereft of any eternal truth.
Second, what did Paul take as his credentials? The beginning of 1 Corinthians 4 would be a good basic look at it. Paul was a galley slave who was faithful with the mysteries of God. Would that characterize Bobby Mitchell? Does Paul J. know? No. He doesn't care.
Paul J was looking for advanced degrees. I was a double major at Maranatha. I majored in pastoral studies and biblical languages. Maranatha told me I was Mr. Maranatha my senior year. I was honored as top Greek student, Who's Who, winner of the preaching contest, and the students voted me student body president. I was president of my Freshman and Sophomore classes, VP of student body my junior year. I was given high honors, wore the gold cords. I was appointed student activity director and sat on the administrative cabinet next to Dr. Cedarholm while I was still in graduate school. I could keep going, but I saw how the sausage was made at college and graduate school and it often wasn't very pretty. It was a lotta, lotta, lotta politics, jockeying for positions by trying to please people. You continued on that path at your own peril.
But I was credentialed!!! I is maybe worth listening to. I coulda been a contender.
Make a scriptural argument. Crickets. Tell people the size of your church and your credentials. Big time listening. It's true. You see it in evangelicalism as well. My son graduated from West Point. That should make him a bit of a celebrity as a Christian. That's where Eisenhower and Grant and Patton and Douglas MacArthur graduated from, people who made history. And I'm his dad! Listen to me, folks. I've got credentials! I wonder if Paul J. could have made it into West Point. Harrumph! Nose looking down. Oh my.
Here's the thing. Robert and his son Bobby Mitchell went to very, very difficult Brunswick, Maine, and both were faithful to preach a true gospel. People were evangelized, discipled, trained. They continue moving out from there preaching the gospel faithfully in the other communities, like who? Like Jesus did. Judea. Samaria. All the towns in Galilee. Caesaria Philippi. Tyre and Sidon. Perea. For the Mitchells it's up in Portland, in Lisbon, Bath, Freeport, and Lewiston. They've built the most beautiful church building you can imagine. They have a great church. They've been faithful. He preaches the Word of God. He's worth listening to. Listen to Bobby Mitchell!
Bobby Mitchell has been faithful to the mysteries of God. He's been a galley slave. He's been a servant of Christ.
Do you know who has credentials? Clarence Sexton. So he preaches at BJU and at the FBFI. Is he the model for church that we want men to follow? Really? Jack Trieber there at Sextons, Jack Schaap. That level of discernment? This is what bigness gets you. The Charismatics have 500 million. Mark Driscoll could buy his way on to the New York Times best seller list. How do you get into the office of the president? Be a Billy Graham, who agreed on universalism and a metaphorical hell.
Paul J. is pushing pragmatism. When size and degrees become preeminent, you get pragmatism. You'll also get discouraged preachers. Then they start looking for a way to succeed. You can find it. And finally you'll get to where the local evangelical pastor is, a five week series on the Walking Dead, where you find out if you are a biter or a walker. His church is biiiig. It's growing faster than anyone around here, so he has a voice. He's worth listening to. Thanks Paul J., because that's what those ideas get you.
Paul J. should be thanking God for Bobby Mitchell, but no. Looking down his nose at him. Shame on you Paul J. Flush your credentials. Shame on fundamentalism. Shame on evangelicalism. Turn from this type of activity. Turn against it!
Here at What Is Truth, we say that text describes conversion, but the FG say it is or might be some kind of post-conversion sanctification experience. I have found they fail in an attempt to describe how this actually occurs after someone is saved, but still they must have this be post-conversion in order to keep FG intact. FG here reads like a desperate conforming of a passage to a predisposed position, not any kind of plain exegesis, letting the text speak for itself. You hear hoofbeats in the text, but FG hears zebras, not horses. They can't have obvious horses be there because it will contradict their zebra position not found in the Bible.
Matthew 13:15 -- For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
Mark 4:12 -- That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.
Luke 1:16 -- And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.
Acts 3:19 -- Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.
Acts 11:21 -- And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.
Acts 26:18 -- To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Acts 26:20 -- But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.
That's enough. There are more. In Acts, it is the operative word for describing Gentiles turning to God from idols. And then you read 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 and see that it is the word that Paul used to describe Gentiles turning to God from idols in Thessalonica.
Lou Martuneac (FG) writes that we don't see Paul talk about "turning" in Acts 17, when he went to Thessalonica. The verses at the beginning of Acts 17 are not exhaustive to what Paul preached when he went to Thessalonica. Acts 17:1-4 and 1 and 2 Thessalonians should be harmonized to know more. Harmonization is the historic means of interpreting parallel passages, not forcing one into the other.
Lou says that the "they" of "they themselves" at the start of 1 Thessalonians 1:9 is "their 'faith to God-ward,' which became known abroad." "They," plural referring to people, doesn't refer to singular "faith," which is not a people or person. This isn't that hard. "They themselves" in v. 9 refers back to "all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia" back in v. 7. The testimony of the saints of the other churches in Macedonia and Achaia about the conversion of the Thessalonians had been received by Paul, because that story had spread all over the place.
The report of v. 9 is "what manner of entering in we (Paul) had unto you." This is talking about right when Paul arrived, first encountered the Thessalonians. It's similar to Paul saying at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15:3, "For I delivered unto you first of all." The report was that at the time Paul first interacted with them, preaching the gospel, they "turned to God from idols." "Turned" is aorist, which is completed action in the past. It's not talking about a practice or a lifestyle characteristic of sanctification, but a particular act at one point in time that was completed, which describes salvation, not sanctification. When you look at those other usages of epitrepho in Acts and elsewhere, you find agreement. The words "repent," "turn," "be converted," and even "believe" are all interrelated as seen in the usages of epitrepho, speaking about nuances of the same act. We're talking about something that is at one point in time, not some ongoing activity. The Macedonian and Achaian churches were showing to others the conversion of the Thessalonians.
FG proponent Lou Martuneac writes that somehow the clincher that this has got to be talking about something post-conversion is the grammatical usage of the two infinitives at the end of v. 9 and the beginning of v. 10, "to serve" (doulein) and "to wait" (anamenein). Rightly, he says they both express purpose and that they are parallel, that is, they go together. Lou makes it sound like some conspiracy that LS advocates don't want people to know about v. 10, leave that out on purpose to cover their tracks. Lou says "to wait for his Son from heaven" cannot be, must not be, salvation or conversion language, because "[t]here is no other passage in Scripture that conditions the reception of eternal life on believing in Christ’s Second Coming or waiting for it!"
I have to admit that I stand with mouth agape in amazement at the above type of game-playing. Lou is saying "turn to serve" might be salvation, but if you add "turn to serve and to wait," then no, it can't be, because 'believing in the second coming of Christ is required nowhere to be saved.' First, he's wrong. Believing in Jesus is believing in the Second Coming. The apostates' big problem was with the second coming and Peter preached that to them (2 Peter). Their rejection of the second coming was their rejection of Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible is historic, He's real, He died and was buried and rose again and ascended into Heaven, and He will be coming because of all those and setting up His kingdom. Read Peter's sermon in Acts 2 -- he includes it to the lost there (vv. 34-36). Why did they want to know how to respond to the sermon? Because they were afraid of the One who had risen from the dead and who would come back and judge. He preaches it again in Acts 3:19. Read what Paul preaches to the Gentiles in Acts 17:29-32 -- same thing.
What comes next? Well, the second stage is conversion. "They themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned from idols to serve the living and true God." There came a turning, a decided turning. The man has come so far in carelessness, so far in sin and unbelief; but now he pauses, and he deliberately turns round, and faces in that direction to which hitherto he had turned his back. Conversion is the turning of a man completely round, to hate what he loved and to love what he hated. Conversion is to turn to God decidedly and distinctly by an act and deed of the mind and will. In some senses we are turned; but in others, like these Thessalonians, we turn. It is not conversion to think that you will turn, or to promise that you will turn, or resolve that you will turn, but actually and in very deed to turn, because the word has had a true entrance into your heart. You must not be content with a reformation; there must be a revolution: old thrones must fall, and a new king must reign. Is it so with you?
He says much more in the sermon, but of course Spurgeon sees it as conversion, because it is conversion. It's an easy call. It is sad that the FG are so caught up in their own viewpoint to wrestle such an easy description of conversion and turn it into something else, only to keep "turning" out of the requirement for conversion. How dangerous is this?
Is there anything post-conversion to 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10? Sure. Someone who turns at one point in time to a life of serving and waiting will serve and wait. They were surely still serving and waiting. But Paul is talking specifically about his entering in to Thessalonica. When he entered in, they turned. This is not talking about the testimony of their present Christian life, but about the testimony of their past turn at a point in time from idols. This is repentance and conversion.
The FG twist passages such as 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 that are really easy to understand, convoluting them for their own purposes. Shame.
Some most trumpeting sola scriptura batter it with the greatest zeal. They pervert doctrine with the ram of a two book approach. They accommodate the academy with integration of the historico-critical, scientific method with the Bible. The two book approach says that God reveals truth in two ways, the first, non-propositional truth injected by God in the natural order, which must be unearthed by human discovery, and, the second, scripture. In this, the former is just as valid as the latter, even as God discloses all truth. Of the many, one field where this two book approach has been applied is church history. Pre-enlightenment, God's Word was good enough as an interpreter of church history, but no longer. In so doing, the gates of biblical authority have been splintered. Let me explain.
Baptists of the nineteenth century, the populace, rank-and-file members of the churches, believed in the perpetuity of the church. They believed there were always New Testament churches from the time of Christ up until their day. That was based on biblical presuppositions and taught in their assemblies by their pastors. They read their own Bibles and saw the same. The Southern Baptist Convention was started in 1845 and that's what people in those churches believed. Then the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) was started in Greenville, SC in 1859, closed almost immediately because of the Civil War, and then reopened in 1865.
For the 1869-1870 school year at SBTS, Crawford Howell Toy, a graduate of the University of Berlin in 1868, became a professor. Toy brought liberalism into the SBTS and the Southern Baptist Convention, influenced by European higher criticism of the Bible and scientific advancement and shaped by the historical-critical method of studying scripture popularized in Europe by Julius Wellhausen. Toy left SBTS for Harvard in 1879, ending as a Unitarian.
He was very charming and very interesting, but does not think much of my notions about Baptist history. We locked horns pretty much. I am not afraid of him anymore.
The Whitsitt view was not the rank and file view of Baptist history. It wasn't the C. H. Spurgeon view of Baptist history. In my opinion, Whitsitt suffered what I've noticed from a lot of men through the years who are in places of academia -- they think they must make their mark in the world with some new discovery. By doing so, they show themselves to be deep and scholarly and independent in thought. Through his "scientific research," Whitsitt determined that baptism by immersion had been lost among the Anabaptists until 1641, introducing this as the valid teaching on the subject. In essence, according to Whitsitt, there had been a total apostasy in the matter of scriptural baptism to the extent that no authoritative baptism any longer existed.
New Testament churches didn't accept Whitsitt's findings. When Whitsitt became the president of the SBTS in 1895, there was an uproar from the grassroots and in order to preserve the seminary, Whitsitt resigned in 1899. Today revisionist historians chalk up his resignation to the forces of Landmark ecclesiology in the Southern Baptist Convention. This didn't occur in a corner. Almost every Bible-believing Baptist rejected Whitsitt's view at the time. Many works were written in refutation and they weren't written by just the typical names quoted -- Pendleton, Graves, and Dayton. Whitsitt's was a two book approach. Baptists, based primarily on biblical presuppositions, believed that baptism by immersion for believers had been handed down from generation to generations of believers. Whitsitt's position was that this could not be accepted without the unequivocal proof of extra-scriptural documentation. This undermined the faith of Christians in their New Testament assemblies.
Whitsitt himself was a strong supporter of ecumenism. It wasn't unusual for him to speak in the congregations of other denominations. He liked it. He wanted this unity. He had motive for looking for something to dump the apple cart of Baptist baptism for the acceptance of alien baptism. When Toy went to Harvard, that didn't hinder his relationship with Whitsitt. These two were of similar mindsets.
It is not untypical today for men on the one hand to trumpet sola scriptura, but on the other hand expect extra-scriptural evidence to back up what the Bible prophesies will occur. In 2 Chronicles 13, we read an unexpected defense of Abijah, the king of Judah, for a war against Jeroboam in the northern kingdom. Despite his own personal ungodliness, Abijah depends on the biblical teaching of worship in the law for his victory over Jeroboam. And that was a winning argument. God did in fact deliver victory to the massively outnumbered and surrounded army of the south over her northern adversary. Abijah's expectations for the future were presuppositional, and, therefore, true.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. God didn't promise to preserve history. Whatever Whitsitt could find was not the final word on the perpetuity and authority of New Testament churches and baptism. In the many answers to Whitsitt's progressive declaration found in preserved and archived letters, papers, pamphlets, and books, again most not written by those labeled "Landmarkers," we read other "evidence," but most of all a dependence on the promises of God, the contents of the one book.
You can't be sola scriptura and two book in your approach, but this is so conveniently characteristic of so many even in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. I'm pointing it out here in church history. Baptist perpetuity was the position, the only position. If these were true churches and true Christians, how could they all be wrong only to be corrected by a man who had an axe to grind? This doesn't ring of the Holy Spirit's work. This clashes with a rejection of total apostasy.
Men have taken off on Whitsitt's work, revising almost an entire century of Baptist history in American and church history in general, by depending on the second book. They mock their opponents as fideists. This has supported an agenda. It supports a larger evangelicalism and fundamentalism. It sets aside differences for a bigger tent with an idea that there is even greater influence. And then it's pro-intellectual. It is operating like the big boys in academics. Actually, it's elitist and even more, it's not true. God is not pleased, because without faith it is impossible to please Him.
The first class lectures for Biblical Hebrew will take place on Saturday, April 5, from 8 -11 am, Central Standard Time. Class will be held every second Saturday (that is, every two weeks). It is possible to take the class without watching the lectures live. The cost for the three-credit course (1st semester) will be $150. The class can be audited for $75. The class lectures will be posted on the Internet and can be viewed online for free, but only those registered for the course will be able to ask questions, engage in classroom interaction, take tests, etc. Scholarships for those who are genuinely unable to afford it (e. g., some who wish to learn Hebrew in very impoverished countries in Africa) are available. To register for the course, contact Mukwonago Baptist Church. More information is also found here. The second semester will follow, Lord willing, after the first semester credit hours are completed. I would encourage you to pray seriously about this special opportunity. If you are going to take the course, please both register and order the textbooks soon, so that we have a good grasp of who is going to be taking the class and so that you will have the required books for the first day. You can find out about the course schedule, get the textbooks, register and pay for the course, etc. at: http://faithsaves.net/hebrew-courses/.

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