The Dignity, Heritage and Relevance of the BBFI
by Noel Smith [First published in 1965]
The Fellowship established 15 years ago this month is a Fellowship of pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and autonomous churches. It believes, teaches, preaches and propagates these basic doctrines:
The unique, plenary, inspiration of the Old and New Testaments The virgin birth, deity, substitutionary death, physical resurrection, physical ascension, and physical return to this earth of Christ Salvation by a personal acceptance of the atoning work of Christ Believer’s baptism only, and that baptism by immersion in water The autonomy of the local church and the churches as against The Church The missionary enterprise in accordance with the spirit and letter of The Great Commission and the example of the apostolic Christians The separation of Church and State The freedom of conscience Incidentally, not a man or woman in the Baptist Bible Fellowship contributed one thing to the creation of a one of these basic doctrines and principles. Not a man or woman in this fellowship contributed one thing to the fashioning of the historical womb from which our Baptist ancestry emerged. These facts emphasize that we are not creators and masters. We are responsible, competent administrators; faithful servants; imaginative, progressive and productive stewards.
The dignity of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International When I speak of dignity, I speak of the intrinsic worth of the doctrinal and historical fabric of our corporate character; not a thread of which, again, we created and wove.
Consider our doctrines. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not philosophic speculations. They are not impersonal moral precepts. They are not primarily ethical principles.
Our doctrines, and all the ideas of healing, hope and triumph connoted and implied by them, are the corollaries of a holy God’s compassionate love and sympathy for the prodigal sons and daughters of men, and of his infinite yearning for them — all of them, without a single exception on the face of this earth — to return to the wealth and peace of the Father’s house they knew before the gates of Eden were closed in Adam’s face. Our doctrines are moistened with the tears of the Almighty.
Our doctrines are not mere words written on paper. Our doctrines are integrated into the sublime mystery and chaste simplicity of Bethlehem. They are integrated into the person and words of the Son of Man as He walked the Jericho roads and Galilean shores talking to men and women about their toil, their sadness, their hopes and their fears; telling them that His Father had a dwelling place far beyond the Mediterranean skies, that His eyes were upon them, even upon the sparrow failing from its nest. Our doctrines are integrated into the crimson-clad Form on Golgotha’s central cross, baring His breast to all the fiery darts of sin, guilt, and shame from Adam to the last infant to be born on the tormented earth. Our doctrines are integrated into the power, glory and majesty of the Resurrection and Ascension. Our doctrines are the golden cords that bind heaven to earth.
Our doctrines, my brethren, are no commonplace things. God help us if we so regard them!
The heritage of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International We Baptists are not miscellaneous collections of historically rooted cults and warring tribes led by ambitious mercenary chieftains. We are a people. We have an historical identity. We have an historical image. We have a continuity of doctrines, principles, and practices that go back into the apostolic age. Our continuity is the longest of any Christian group in the world. On April 23, 1529, Charles V, King of France, issued a decree against the Anabaptists. In that decree we hear one of the great and powerful kings in history saying that the Anabaptists, as a powerful and influential group, were an ancient sect; that they had been on earth “many hundreds of years.” Modern research by competent authorities, some of the greatest of them not Baptists, have established and substantiated that Baptists did not originate during the Reformation, but that the Reformation was a reawakening of ancient principles.
Baptists have the longest continuity of any Christian group in the world. And this is no commonplace thing. It is a thing of great and impressive dignity. But here tonight I shall confine myself to the Anabaptists of the Reformation.
Until the 19th century, the Anabaptists were universally pictured as a rootless sect of irresponsible religious radicals, as theological and spiritual anarchists, thrown upon the shores by the Reformation. At their very Sunday best, the Anabaptists were the stepchildren of the Reformation. They were a disunited, negative force. They made no positive, permanent contributions to either the state or the church.
There was a definite reason for this picture. Until the 19th century, the writings on Anabaptists were based on the writings of despisers and persecutors of the Anabaptists: Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin and Henry Bullinger.
Anabaptist movement distinct from Reformation Today that picture is no longer valid. We now know, on the authority of competent historians, that there was in the days of the Reformation a mainstream of Anabaptists who taught, preached, propagated, and died for the body of doctrine that I enumerated at the opening of my remarks.
Listen to Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette, the profound and discriminating historian of Yale University. Here is what he says in Volume 3 of his A History of the Expansion of Christianity: The Anabaptist wing of Protestantism took many forms and was not the prolonged shadow of any one or two great leaders. It traced its spiritual descent from some of the groups, usually of humble folk of the Middle Ages, who, touched by the New Testament, attempted to reproduce what they believed to be the simplicity and the thoroughgoing commitment of life to the Christian ideal characteristic of Christians of apostolic times. It seemed to spring spontaneously out of contact with the New Testament and broke out in many different places. ... To the Anabaptist movements, two streams contributed: the religious, which we have just attempted to summarize, and the social, the uprising of the common man, stirred and reinforced by the conviction born of the Christian impulse of the worth of all men, even the humblest.
I hope none of us here tonight will fail to read between the lines of what this distinguished historian says there about the Anabaptists and the New Testament.
But we now know from these authorities something else about the Anabaptists. We know that the Anabaptists did not come out of the Reformation. We know that they were a separate and distinct movement, and we know on the same authority that the movement has proved to be as important as Protestantism.
Franklin H. Littell, a historian who has served on the faculties of both Yale and the University of Chicago, in his The Origins of Sectarianism Protestantism, writes, “The Anabaptist revolution within Christian history was so thoroughgoing as to be sui generis.”
Sui generis means “its own kind; in a class by itself; unique; peculiar.” This Yale and University of Chicago historian says that his studies of the Anabaptists suggest to him that the Anabaptist revolution in the Reformation days was sui generis, that it was in a class by itself.
In the volume entitled Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, edited by George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal, the introduction to this classic work expressed the same basic views: “From all sides we are coming to recognize in the Radical Reformation [by which he means Anabaptists] a major expression of the religious movement of the sixteenth century. It is one that is as distinctive as Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism and is perhaps comparably significant in the rise of modern Christianity.”
From the Reformation emerged the Protestant churches of today. In the days of the Reformation there were Anabaptists, a distinct movement, and from that movement came the doctrines we hold today. Now let’s be specific. Freedom of conscience is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Religious liberty is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Believer’s baptism is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Baptism of the believer by immersion in water, symbolizing that the believer has died, been buried, and resurrected with Christ, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. The local, visible church, autonomous, with Christ as its only Head and the Bible as its only rule of faith and practice, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
The worldwide missionary enterprise, the Divine obligation upon every Christian, clergy and laymen alike, to push the gospel of Christ out over all the world in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Great Commission, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. From Littell’s book again, we read,
"… the Churches of the Reformation were almost destitute of any sense of missionary vocation. The foremost leaders — men like Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Zwingli and Calvin — displayed neither missionary vision nor missionary spirit. While conceding in theory the universality of Christianity, they never recognized it as a call to the Church of their day. ... But the Anabaptists were the first to make the Commission binding upon all the church members. In their organization, the promise to go where sent was part of the ceremony of admission to the True Church. They ... for the gospel’s sake were made pilgrims and martyrs throughout the known world."
Again, the obligation of worldwide missions, binding upon every member of the church, is not a Reformation doctrine, it’s a Baptist doctrine.
Baptist appreciation for non-Baptist contributions to history Now in saying what I have said, I make no appeal to pharisaical sentiments. I am not the pharisaical sectarian that some people might think me to be, or that some wish that I were. While I don’t hesitate to bring into focus these great, central, fundamental, decisive and productive facts of Baptist history, I at the same time am not so intellectually dishonest, prejudiced and biased as to ignore, or try to minimize, wittingly or unwittingly, other great and decisive facts of history. I spontaneously recognize and give full credit and honor to non-Baptists for their fundamental and permanent contributions to Christian history. And I spontaneously recognize the debt we Baptists owe them. I shall mention a few.
The lean, sinewy Jerome was not a Baptist. But his great Latin Vulgate version of the Bible was the Bible of Europe for a thousand years.
John Wycliffe was not a Baptist. But his version of the Bible was the first complete translation of the Bible into the English language.
William Tyndale was not a Baptist. But few men have done more than he did to give the Bible to the masses of people in their own language, and he sealed the faith in that Bible with his own blood.
None of the revisers and translators of the majestic King James Version was a Baptist.
John Wesley was not a Baptist. But very learned historians have held that John Wesley’s revivals were decisive in what England became with her Christianity and progress.
Jonathan Edwards was not a Baptist. But he was America’s first philosopher, one of the godliest men who ever lived, and the father of the Great Awakening.
Charles Grandison Finney was not a Baptist. But he was one of the mightiest preachers since Paul, and his power and influence are still felt in many parts of the world.
D. L. Moody, Sam Jones, and Billy Sunday were not Baptists. But what would the history of this country have been without the revivals led by these men, without all the direct and indirect influence and fruits of these revivals?
As for Billy Sunday, had it not been for him, the Baptist Bible Fellowship would not have had the editor it has, which might be a good thing, and it would not have my friend and colleague, Fred Donnelson, which would be a bad thing.I have no inclination to try to bend the facts of history to accord with my likes and dislikes. I am a realist in a realistic world. And being a realistic world, it has a great variety of needs and requires a great variety of temperament, talent, gifts and abilities to meet those needs. But with due recognition of, and respect for, these I have mentioned and the mighty hosts that I have not mentioned, I ask you.
What kind of world would the Western world have been had the Protestantism of the Reformation become its master? How many interdenominational autonomous congregations and institutions would there have been on this earth today were it not for the Baptist concept of the local church, were it not for the Baptist sacrifice and blood that not only defended that concept before the purse and the sword of the Reformers, but established it in modern history as a concept equal to and more productive than any concept of the Reformers?
What would this world be today if there had emerged from the Reformation only the Protestant movement instead of the Baptist and Protestant movements? I say to you again, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, integrated into the longest Christian continuity in the world, demonstrably in the mainstream of Baptist thought and practice, is an entity of great essence and dignity. God help us to recognize it and to have for it the respect and dedication the exalting fact demands that we should have.
The relevance of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International The general attitude of the world today is that truth is determined by the passing of time. There are no abiding, permanent truths, not to mention the ancient doctrines and principles that constitute our corporate character. The world takes cowardly refuge behind the ancient proverb, “You can’t turn the clock back.” Time invalidates all truths; time nullifies one set of truths and fastens another set upon us.
What is the relevance of our Fellowship in today’s world? 1. It is a Fellowship anchored in history. This is not true of any of the proud and rich cults. This is not true of countless social movements beating drums and waving flags today. They have no historical roots. And because they have no historical roots, because they are authenticated by no great philosophy, because they have no great objective that is integrated into eternal truth and meaning, all these cults and movements are peripheral; they are not in the mainstream of life. Their leaders, many of them trying to play God, get increasingly tired and weary. They have to keep “dramatizing their issues.” They must feed their followers a new crisis every day.
They are not anchored in history.
2. There is our believer’s baptism. How relevant is that? The Roman Catholic Church, all the state churches, and the bulk of what calls itself Protestantism, are now creating a one-world church. What is the strength of this combination of ecclesiastical power? It is infant baptism. Were it not for infant baptism, there never would have been a state church on this earth. Were it not for infant baptism, there never would have been the creation of this ecclesiastical power that is now leading what is called Christendom to the slave camp of the Antichrist.
One of the mightiest forces on this earth against the union of the sword with religion is the ancient Baptist doctrine of believer’s baptism.
3. There is the local, autonomous congregation. The religious and political totalitarians have never liked the local congregation. It is too difficult to deal with. They want a centralized ecclesiastical authority. They have always been able to deal with that, and never more so than today.
But a genuine New Testament congregation is autonomous. It is independent of all external ecclesiastical authority. And that congregation acknowledges that it has but one Head — Christ; and but one rule of faith and practice — the written Word of God.
A New Testament Baptist church inherently opposes centralized ecclesiastical authority and power. By its very nature, the last citadel on this earth to hold out against universal totalitarianism, religious and political, will be a New Testament Baptist church.
4. The Baptist Bible Fellowship not only believes in a faith, but in an order. It not only believes in substance, but in method. It believes that a doctrine is impotent until it is translated into the concrete. To translate a doctrine into the concrete requires method. It is not enough to have the human race; you must have an adequate method of preserving the human race and enabling it to achieve the end for which it was created. That Divine method is the local, visible church.
The Baptist Bible Fellowship doesn’t conduct a mass meeting and then pull up stakes and go to another place, leaving the converts to shift for themselves. We win men and women to Christ, and where there is a need, we bring them together into a local church where they are taught the Scriptures.
And what can be more relevant and practical in a disintegrating world like this than the establishing of these local corporate societies of Christians all over the world? It means that we are doing more than lamenting about the world going to hell: we are building a new world from the ground up.
5. The Baptist Bible Fellowship is not afraid to live and work in the mainstream of life. We are progressive. We are not a little proud, suspicious sectarian group huddled away in some sectarian hideout lest our white wings should be contaminated with other Christians’ fallout.
The Founder of Christianity was the Son of Man. That title equates him with universality. The founder of the Christian religion was a universal man. His religion is a universal religion. His religion is not to be confined to sects and cloisters and studies. It is for the marketplaces, the streets and highways, the oceans and the skies. It is only comparatively recently that we made the heartwarming discovery that the Greek of our New Testament is not the classic Greek, the Greek of the isolated philosophers and classic writers. It is the koine Greek — the Greek of commerce, law, politics — the Greek understood and spoken by the masses of the people.
Our blessed Lord spoke the language of the common people. He lived and taught and worked in the mainstream of life. You found Him where the people were. He wasn’t afraid of being contaminated by them; the scribes and Pharisees were.
Today and tomorrow in the Baptist Bible Fellowship International There has never been in the history of our country such a need for the Baptist Bible Fellowship and its work as there is today. The truth is, when judged by our opportunities and obligation, we as a Fellowship have done little more than lay a foundation for a great universal work.
And in view of this, none but a warped mind and a withered spirit, or a persimmon-minded Pharisee, would ever contend that we don’t have an obligation to Christ and the vast multitudes of the lost for whom He died, to create and maintain a corporate brotherhood of those of like faith and order and do together what we never could do alone. If we as churches don’t have that obligation, then Christians as individuals don’t have the obligation to unite with a local church and do with others what the individual never can do alone.
These great, matured and sobering facts of our long continuity, our historical image as a people, the dignity and relevancy of our corporate character, the aches and groans and hopeless frustrations of the vast multitudes for whom Christ has infinite compassion, and wishes them to come to Him for healing and rest —
My brethren, these facts ought to elevate our thought about the cheap and degrading plain of petty emotional strife and sectarian outlook and motivation. They ought to water and refresh our spirits. They ought to kindle a glow in our hearts. They ought to infuse legitimate pride and dignity into our individual and corporate characters. They ought to lead us to a new dedication, as individuals and churches, to the universal work of our universal Savior.
Let men do as they will. The world is big enough for all kinds of men and all kinds of movements. But let us as Baptists retain our corporate character and keep in the mainstream of the deep waters of our long continuity. If “independents” want to keep their canoes and paddle around in the ponds, let them do it. But let it be said of us that we go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters.
Taken from the Baptist Bible Tribune, January / February 2001 Vol. 10 No. 1 Used by permission.
The Fellowship established 15 years ago this month is a Fellowship of pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and autonomous churches. It believes, teaches, preaches and propagates these basic doctrines:
The unique, plenary, inspiration of the Old and New Testaments The virgin birth, deity, substitutionary death, physical resurrection, physical ascension, and physical return to this earth of Christ Salvation by a personal acceptance of the atoning work of Christ Believer’s baptism only, and that baptism by immersion in water The autonomy of the local church and the churches as against The Church The missionary enterprise in accordance with the spirit and letter of The Great Commission and the example of the apostolic Christians The separation of Church and State The freedom of conscience Incidentally, not a man or woman in the Baptist Bible Fellowship contributed one thing to the creation of a one of these basic doctrines and principles. Not a man or woman in this fellowship contributed one thing to the fashioning of the historical womb from which our Baptist ancestry emerged. These facts emphasize that we are not creators and masters. We are responsible, competent administrators; faithful servants; imaginative, progressive and productive stewards.
The dignity of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International When I speak of dignity, I speak of the intrinsic worth of the doctrinal and historical fabric of our corporate character; not a thread of which, again, we created and wove.
Consider our doctrines. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not philosophic speculations. They are not impersonal moral precepts. They are not primarily ethical principles.
Our doctrines, and all the ideas of healing, hope and triumph connoted and implied by them, are the corollaries of a holy God’s compassionate love and sympathy for the prodigal sons and daughters of men, and of his infinite yearning for them — all of them, without a single exception on the face of this earth — to return to the wealth and peace of the Father’s house they knew before the gates of Eden were closed in Adam’s face. Our doctrines are moistened with the tears of the Almighty.
Our doctrines are not mere words written on paper. Our doctrines are integrated into the sublime mystery and chaste simplicity of Bethlehem. They are integrated into the person and words of the Son of Man as He walked the Jericho roads and Galilean shores talking to men and women about their toil, their sadness, their hopes and their fears; telling them that His Father had a dwelling place far beyond the Mediterranean skies, that His eyes were upon them, even upon the sparrow failing from its nest. Our doctrines are integrated into the crimson-clad Form on Golgotha’s central cross, baring His breast to all the fiery darts of sin, guilt, and shame from Adam to the last infant to be born on the tormented earth. Our doctrines are integrated into the power, glory and majesty of the Resurrection and Ascension. Our doctrines are the golden cords that bind heaven to earth.
Our doctrines, my brethren, are no commonplace things. God help us if we so regard them!
The heritage of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International We Baptists are not miscellaneous collections of historically rooted cults and warring tribes led by ambitious mercenary chieftains. We are a people. We have an historical identity. We have an historical image. We have a continuity of doctrines, principles, and practices that go back into the apostolic age. Our continuity is the longest of any Christian group in the world. On April 23, 1529, Charles V, King of France, issued a decree against the Anabaptists. In that decree we hear one of the great and powerful kings in history saying that the Anabaptists, as a powerful and influential group, were an ancient sect; that they had been on earth “many hundreds of years.” Modern research by competent authorities, some of the greatest of them not Baptists, have established and substantiated that Baptists did not originate during the Reformation, but that the Reformation was a reawakening of ancient principles.
Baptists have the longest continuity of any Christian group in the world. And this is no commonplace thing. It is a thing of great and impressive dignity. But here tonight I shall confine myself to the Anabaptists of the Reformation.
Until the 19th century, the Anabaptists were universally pictured as a rootless sect of irresponsible religious radicals, as theological and spiritual anarchists, thrown upon the shores by the Reformation. At their very Sunday best, the Anabaptists were the stepchildren of the Reformation. They were a disunited, negative force. They made no positive, permanent contributions to either the state or the church.
There was a definite reason for this picture. Until the 19th century, the writings on Anabaptists were based on the writings of despisers and persecutors of the Anabaptists: Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin and Henry Bullinger.
Anabaptist movement distinct from Reformation Today that picture is no longer valid. We now know, on the authority of competent historians, that there was in the days of the Reformation a mainstream of Anabaptists who taught, preached, propagated, and died for the body of doctrine that I enumerated at the opening of my remarks.
Listen to Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette, the profound and discriminating historian of Yale University. Here is what he says in Volume 3 of his A History of the Expansion of Christianity: The Anabaptist wing of Protestantism took many forms and was not the prolonged shadow of any one or two great leaders. It traced its spiritual descent from some of the groups, usually of humble folk of the Middle Ages, who, touched by the New Testament, attempted to reproduce what they believed to be the simplicity and the thoroughgoing commitment of life to the Christian ideal characteristic of Christians of apostolic times. It seemed to spring spontaneously out of contact with the New Testament and broke out in many different places. ... To the Anabaptist movements, two streams contributed: the religious, which we have just attempted to summarize, and the social, the uprising of the common man, stirred and reinforced by the conviction born of the Christian impulse of the worth of all men, even the humblest.
I hope none of us here tonight will fail to read between the lines of what this distinguished historian says there about the Anabaptists and the New Testament.
But we now know from these authorities something else about the Anabaptists. We know that the Anabaptists did not come out of the Reformation. We know that they were a separate and distinct movement, and we know on the same authority that the movement has proved to be as important as Protestantism.
Franklin H. Littell, a historian who has served on the faculties of both Yale and the University of Chicago, in his The Origins of Sectarianism Protestantism, writes, “The Anabaptist revolution within Christian history was so thoroughgoing as to be sui generis.”
Sui generis means “its own kind; in a class by itself; unique; peculiar.” This Yale and University of Chicago historian says that his studies of the Anabaptists suggest to him that the Anabaptist revolution in the Reformation days was sui generis, that it was in a class by itself.
In the volume entitled Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, edited by George H. Williams and Angel M. Mergal, the introduction to this classic work expressed the same basic views: “From all sides we are coming to recognize in the Radical Reformation [by which he means Anabaptists] a major expression of the religious movement of the sixteenth century. It is one that is as distinctive as Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism and is perhaps comparably significant in the rise of modern Christianity.”
From the Reformation emerged the Protestant churches of today. In the days of the Reformation there were Anabaptists, a distinct movement, and from that movement came the doctrines we hold today. Now let’s be specific. Freedom of conscience is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Religious liberty is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Believer’s baptism is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. Baptism of the believer by immersion in water, symbolizing that the believer has died, been buried, and resurrected with Christ, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. The local, visible church, autonomous, with Christ as its only Head and the Bible as its only rule of faith and practice, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine.
The worldwide missionary enterprise, the Divine obligation upon every Christian, clergy and laymen alike, to push the gospel of Christ out over all the world in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Great Commission, is not a Reformation doctrine; it is a Baptist doctrine. From Littell’s book again, we read,
"… the Churches of the Reformation were almost destitute of any sense of missionary vocation. The foremost leaders — men like Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Zwingli and Calvin — displayed neither missionary vision nor missionary spirit. While conceding in theory the universality of Christianity, they never recognized it as a call to the Church of their day. ... But the Anabaptists were the first to make the Commission binding upon all the church members. In their organization, the promise to go where sent was part of the ceremony of admission to the True Church. They ... for the gospel’s sake were made pilgrims and martyrs throughout the known world."
Again, the obligation of worldwide missions, binding upon every member of the church, is not a Reformation doctrine, it’s a Baptist doctrine.
Baptist appreciation for non-Baptist contributions to history Now in saying what I have said, I make no appeal to pharisaical sentiments. I am not the pharisaical sectarian that some people might think me to be, or that some wish that I were. While I don’t hesitate to bring into focus these great, central, fundamental, decisive and productive facts of Baptist history, I at the same time am not so intellectually dishonest, prejudiced and biased as to ignore, or try to minimize, wittingly or unwittingly, other great and decisive facts of history. I spontaneously recognize and give full credit and honor to non-Baptists for their fundamental and permanent contributions to Christian history. And I spontaneously recognize the debt we Baptists owe them. I shall mention a few.
The lean, sinewy Jerome was not a Baptist. But his great Latin Vulgate version of the Bible was the Bible of Europe for a thousand years.
John Wycliffe was not a Baptist. But his version of the Bible was the first complete translation of the Bible into the English language.
William Tyndale was not a Baptist. But few men have done more than he did to give the Bible to the masses of people in their own language, and he sealed the faith in that Bible with his own blood.
None of the revisers and translators of the majestic King James Version was a Baptist.
John Wesley was not a Baptist. But very learned historians have held that John Wesley’s revivals were decisive in what England became with her Christianity and progress.
Jonathan Edwards was not a Baptist. But he was America’s first philosopher, one of the godliest men who ever lived, and the father of the Great Awakening.
Charles Grandison Finney was not a Baptist. But he was one of the mightiest preachers since Paul, and his power and influence are still felt in many parts of the world.
D. L. Moody, Sam Jones, and Billy Sunday were not Baptists. But what would the history of this country have been without the revivals led by these men, without all the direct and indirect influence and fruits of these revivals?
As for Billy Sunday, had it not been for him, the Baptist Bible Fellowship would not have had the editor it has, which might be a good thing, and it would not have my friend and colleague, Fred Donnelson, which would be a bad thing.I have no inclination to try to bend the facts of history to accord with my likes and dislikes. I am a realist in a realistic world. And being a realistic world, it has a great variety of needs and requires a great variety of temperament, talent, gifts and abilities to meet those needs. But with due recognition of, and respect for, these I have mentioned and the mighty hosts that I have not mentioned, I ask you.
What kind of world would the Western world have been had the Protestantism of the Reformation become its master? How many interdenominational autonomous congregations and institutions would there have been on this earth today were it not for the Baptist concept of the local church, were it not for the Baptist sacrifice and blood that not only defended that concept before the purse and the sword of the Reformers, but established it in modern history as a concept equal to and more productive than any concept of the Reformers?
What would this world be today if there had emerged from the Reformation only the Protestant movement instead of the Baptist and Protestant movements? I say to you again, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, integrated into the longest Christian continuity in the world, demonstrably in the mainstream of Baptist thought and practice, is an entity of great essence and dignity. God help us to recognize it and to have for it the respect and dedication the exalting fact demands that we should have.
The relevance of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International The general attitude of the world today is that truth is determined by the passing of time. There are no abiding, permanent truths, not to mention the ancient doctrines and principles that constitute our corporate character. The world takes cowardly refuge behind the ancient proverb, “You can’t turn the clock back.” Time invalidates all truths; time nullifies one set of truths and fastens another set upon us.
What is the relevance of our Fellowship in today’s world? 1. It is a Fellowship anchored in history. This is not true of any of the proud and rich cults. This is not true of countless social movements beating drums and waving flags today. They have no historical roots. And because they have no historical roots, because they are authenticated by no great philosophy, because they have no great objective that is integrated into eternal truth and meaning, all these cults and movements are peripheral; they are not in the mainstream of life. Their leaders, many of them trying to play God, get increasingly tired and weary. They have to keep “dramatizing their issues.” They must feed their followers a new crisis every day.
They are not anchored in history.
2. There is our believer’s baptism. How relevant is that? The Roman Catholic Church, all the state churches, and the bulk of what calls itself Protestantism, are now creating a one-world church. What is the strength of this combination of ecclesiastical power? It is infant baptism. Were it not for infant baptism, there never would have been a state church on this earth. Were it not for infant baptism, there never would have been the creation of this ecclesiastical power that is now leading what is called Christendom to the slave camp of the Antichrist.
One of the mightiest forces on this earth against the union of the sword with religion is the ancient Baptist doctrine of believer’s baptism.
3. There is the local, autonomous congregation. The religious and political totalitarians have never liked the local congregation. It is too difficult to deal with. They want a centralized ecclesiastical authority. They have always been able to deal with that, and never more so than today.
But a genuine New Testament congregation is autonomous. It is independent of all external ecclesiastical authority. And that congregation acknowledges that it has but one Head — Christ; and but one rule of faith and practice — the written Word of God.
A New Testament Baptist church inherently opposes centralized ecclesiastical authority and power. By its very nature, the last citadel on this earth to hold out against universal totalitarianism, religious and political, will be a New Testament Baptist church.
4. The Baptist Bible Fellowship not only believes in a faith, but in an order. It not only believes in substance, but in method. It believes that a doctrine is impotent until it is translated into the concrete. To translate a doctrine into the concrete requires method. It is not enough to have the human race; you must have an adequate method of preserving the human race and enabling it to achieve the end for which it was created. That Divine method is the local, visible church.
The Baptist Bible Fellowship doesn’t conduct a mass meeting and then pull up stakes and go to another place, leaving the converts to shift for themselves. We win men and women to Christ, and where there is a need, we bring them together into a local church where they are taught the Scriptures.
And what can be more relevant and practical in a disintegrating world like this than the establishing of these local corporate societies of Christians all over the world? It means that we are doing more than lamenting about the world going to hell: we are building a new world from the ground up.
5. The Baptist Bible Fellowship is not afraid to live and work in the mainstream of life. We are progressive. We are not a little proud, suspicious sectarian group huddled away in some sectarian hideout lest our white wings should be contaminated with other Christians’ fallout.
The Founder of Christianity was the Son of Man. That title equates him with universality. The founder of the Christian religion was a universal man. His religion is a universal religion. His religion is not to be confined to sects and cloisters and studies. It is for the marketplaces, the streets and highways, the oceans and the skies. It is only comparatively recently that we made the heartwarming discovery that the Greek of our New Testament is not the classic Greek, the Greek of the isolated philosophers and classic writers. It is the koine Greek — the Greek of commerce, law, politics — the Greek understood and spoken by the masses of the people.
Our blessed Lord spoke the language of the common people. He lived and taught and worked in the mainstream of life. You found Him where the people were. He wasn’t afraid of being contaminated by them; the scribes and Pharisees were.
Today and tomorrow in the Baptist Bible Fellowship International There has never been in the history of our country such a need for the Baptist Bible Fellowship and its work as there is today. The truth is, when judged by our opportunities and obligation, we as a Fellowship have done little more than lay a foundation for a great universal work.
And in view of this, none but a warped mind and a withered spirit, or a persimmon-minded Pharisee, would ever contend that we don’t have an obligation to Christ and the vast multitudes of the lost for whom He died, to create and maintain a corporate brotherhood of those of like faith and order and do together what we never could do alone. If we as churches don’t have that obligation, then Christians as individuals don’t have the obligation to unite with a local church and do with others what the individual never can do alone.
These great, matured and sobering facts of our long continuity, our historical image as a people, the dignity and relevancy of our corporate character, the aches and groans and hopeless frustrations of the vast multitudes for whom Christ has infinite compassion, and wishes them to come to Him for healing and rest —
My brethren, these facts ought to elevate our thought about the cheap and degrading plain of petty emotional strife and sectarian outlook and motivation. They ought to water and refresh our spirits. They ought to kindle a glow in our hearts. They ought to infuse legitimate pride and dignity into our individual and corporate characters. They ought to lead us to a new dedication, as individuals and churches, to the universal work of our universal Savior.
Let men do as they will. The world is big enough for all kinds of men and all kinds of movements. But let us as Baptists retain our corporate character and keep in the mainstream of the deep waters of our long continuity. If “independents” want to keep their canoes and paddle around in the ponds, let them do it. But let it be said of us that we go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters.
Taken from the Baptist Bible Tribune, January / February 2001 Vol. 10 No. 1 Used by permission.
posted by Billy Hamm | 10:07 AM
