Good evening, good to see you this evening.
Would you turn with me in your Bibles to the book of John, John chapter one, book of John
chapter one, as is our custom will read the entire chapter beginning in verse one of John
chapter one, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, if you get the acts, you've gone too far, John
chapter one and John chapter one, the Bible reads in the beginning was the word and the
word was with God and the word was God the same was in the beginning with God all things
were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life and the
life was the light of men and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended
it not there was a man sent from God whose name was John the same came for a witness
to bear witness of the life that of the light that all men through him might believe he
was not that light but was sent to bear witness of that light that was the true light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world he was in the world and the world was made
by him and the world knew him not he came unto his own and his own received him not
but as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them
that believe on his name which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor
of the will of man but of God and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we
beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth
John bare witness of him and cried saying this was he of whom I spake he that cometh
after me is preferred before me for he was before me and of his fullness have all we
received and grace for grace for the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ no man hath seen God at any time the only begotten son which is in the bosom
of the father he hath declared him and this is the record of John when the Jews sent
priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him who art thou and he confessed and denied
not but confessed I am not the Christ and they asked him what then art thou Elias and
he saith I'm not art thou that prophet and he answered no then said they unto him who
art thou that we may give an answer to them that sent us what sayest thou of thyself
he said I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness make straight the way of the Lord
as said the prophet Isaias and they which were sent were of the Pharisees and they asked
him and said unto him why baptizes thou then if thou be not that Christ nor Elias neither
that prophet John answered them saying I baptize with water there standeth one among you whom
you know not he it is who coming after me is preferred before me whose shoes latchet
I'm not worthy to unloose these things were done in Beth-Abarah beyond Jordan where John
was baptizing the next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith behold the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of the world this is he of whom I said after me cometh
a man which is preferred before me for he was before me and I knew him not but that
he should be made manifest to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water and John bare
record saying I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode upon
him and I knew him not he that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto me upon
whom thou shalt see the spirit descending and remaining on him the same is he which
baptize it with the Holy Ghost and I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God again the
next day after John stood and two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus as he walked he sayeth
behold the Lamb of God and the two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus then
Jesus turned and saw them following and saith unto them what seek ye they said unto him rabbi
which is to say being interpreted master where dwellest thou he saith unto them come and see
they came and saw where he dwelt and abode with him that day for it was about the tenth hour one
of the two which heard John speak and followed him was Andrew Simon Peter's brother he first
findeth his own brother Simon and saith unto him we have found the Messiah's which is being
interpreted the Christ and he brought him to Jesus and when Jesus beheld him he said thou art Simon
the son of Jonah thou shalt be called Kephas which is by interpretation a stone the day following
Jesus would go forth into Galilee and findeth Philip and saith unto him follow me now Philip
was of Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter Philip findeth Nathaniel and said unto him we
have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write Jesus of Nazareth the son of
Joseph and Nathaniel said unto him can there any good thing come out of Nazareth Philip saith unto
him come and see Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him and saith of him behold an Israelite indeed
in whom is no guile Nathaniel saith unto him whence knowest thou me Jesus answered and said unto him
before that Philip called thee when thou was under the fig tree I saw thee Nathaniel answered and
saith unto him rabbi thou art the son of God thou art the king of Israel Jesus answered and said
unto him because I said unto thee I saw thee under the fig tree believest thou thou shalt
see greater things than these and he saith unto him verily verily I say unto you hereafter ye shall
see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
But Alex, will you pray for us?
Amen.
Feel that real quick.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well I'm glad the pastor asked me to preach tonight.
It was a little bit unexpected.
Is there an echo or is it just me?
No.
Okay.
It must just be me.
Yeah.
I'm thankful the pastor asked me to preach.
It's always fun to preach up here.
There's always something new.
It's always a nice rush to try to find a sermon.
I don't really keep them at the top of my head just thinking, "Oh, I'll preach it because
it's out the next week."
Something will stir my mind and I'll forget about it later.
The title of my sermon is "Baptist, Fundamental, and Independent."
I'll just quickly pray.
Lord, as I see it, fill me with your Spirit.
Help me guide my words and bless this sermon.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
So, as I said, it's always wonderful, it's always a treat when the pastor asks any of
us to preach.
I'm sure of those men that have been given that honor, I'm sure you could say the same.
My idea for the sermon was actually for my dad.
He's grown up Presbyterian.
My grandmother was a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher, so by consequence my dad was a very
faithful attendee of Presbyterian churches.
And so he kind of has a base level knowledge of Christianity, plus he's conservative and
American, so he knows about what Christians are, he knows the basics, the basics of the
faith.
He has some idea, it's hard growing up in America and not know what a Baptist is, we're
everywhere of different varieties.
It's hard to find a town that doesn't have a Baptist church.
It doesn't matter what they preach, there's a Baptist church in every town in America.
We kind of get an idea, we all know what they do, we baptize people, it's in a name.
That's why I picked John 1 as my starting chapter.
I don't think I actually used any verses from John 1, so you don't need to leave a bookmark
there.
But it gives us an idea of kind of our namesake, John the Baptist, who's in many ways we take
after or a little bit more rougher, we baptize people in water, in the river, well not the
literal River of Jordan, we're in America, although there probably is a river, a Jordan
River in America.
We do have a Canaan in Oregon, an Ireland in Oregon, so it's not out of the question,
but we baptize people in the water, we don't sprinkle people.
To go back to my idea, I was continuing with the old John thing, very direct, we don't
like the mince words, we'll directly take issues with people, preach like John the Baptist
had no, he just went after the Pharisees when he had the chance, he wasn't polite, I imagine
he was polite, he did have some followers so he was probably polite with them, but there's
a time and a place for that and there's a time and a place to be more direct and he
knew the difference, so we share, we don't have a lot of ornaments, ornamental dresses,
we don't take it as far as John who wore camel hair, but we're not part of, he wasn't
part of the whole pharisaical order at that time, he wasn't really part of the temple
and all their customs and traditions and stuff, he was independent, he was doing his own thing
by the will of God, but to go back to my idea for the sermon, my dad asked me, what, you
keep talking about the IFB, what is the IFB, and more of a, he's more asking a more deeper
question of, so what does it mean to be Baptist, what does it mean to be fundamental, what
does it mean to be independent, and I give him a base level overview, but if he has these
questions, I imagine someone else has these questions, he's definitely more inquisitive,
more philosophical, so I gave him that, and I was looking into, and since I'm preaching,
it's going to also be a history sermon, sorry, I like history, and Baptists are woven into
the history of America, they're one and the same, I'll go into some of the stuff that
are contributions to the American world, and you might not know it, but we did contribute
a lot, a lot of things that we take for granted nowadays, we're not always there, right?
So just to give a little short history of the Baptist Church, the first Baptist Church
was founded by John Smith in Amsterdam in I think 1607, that was at least Baptist in
name, so the name of the church was Baptist, of course the ideas that we hold to mainly
as I get into independence from the Roman Catholic Church in the West and baptism by
full immersion and believers baptism, they're not entirely new to John Smith, they've always
kind of been around, you have separatist groups like the Waldensians who practice asceticism
which is plain living, they weren't extravagant, they also practiced believers baptism and
they did not like the Catholic Church, they were in the Swiss Alps, you have the Lollards
in England who were I guess proto-Anglicans, almost proto-Puritans if you read the, I do
have one of their complaints against the Church of England at the time, 1385, they are proto-Anglicans,
they are also a low church, they are very puritanical in their approach, very interesting
if you get a chance to read their complaints, basically what I was saying is none of our
beliefs are new, we did not spring up in 1607, that was just the current name that those
beliefs went by and have been ever since, John Smith actually became a Mennonite later
in his life, and he's stayed in Europe, so I don't really care that much about him.
But to get back to an actual American, shortly after, not that long ago, it was John Clark,
who if you go and look at the sermon, that's who the old guy in the thumbnail is, John
Clark, he's the co-founder of Rhode Island, if you didn't know, Rhode Island was founded
by Baptists. John Clark was an Anglican, became a Puritan, and then became a Baptist minister.
And he, along with Roger Williams, would set up the Rhode Island colony, and then John
Clark would obtain its charter from Charles II, and I think 1680, I want to say, 1688,
I think. For the express purpose of religious liberty, that was one of the big things Baptists
pushed was religious liberty, freedom to practice one's religion without being hassled. If you
know your United States geography, you know that Rhode Island, just to the north of them
is Massachusetts, and just to the west of them is Connecticut. Both of these colonies
were full of Puritans. Pilgrims went there. The Puritans were insane. They had a lot
of good points, but they just were crazy. I was reading a book called Flintlock and Tomahawk
about the Prince Philip's War, and the Puritans are brought up because they're the main characters
in that. You'd have Indians going to the Dutch in New York, getting alcohol, getting drunk,
wandering into a Puritan colony, and before they knew it, they'd be arrested, tried in
a Puritan court, beaten, fined, and let go, and they had no idea what was going on, because
as far as they knew, it was just Dutch were white guys, the Puritans were white, they
had no idea what was going on. So the Puritans were kind of insane. They were one of the
reasons that the Baptists all kind of settled in Rhode Island, and why they pushed so heavily
for religious freedom. You have John Clark, as I brought up. He was actually arrested
in Massachusetts. He went there to perform some religious, I think, probably the Lord's
Supper. It's not really clear on what he was doing, but I think it was the Lord's Supper
with an older man who could not travel to Rhode Island, and the Puritans arrested him.
Of the five charges, one of them was maintaining the Massachusetts churches were not true churches,
and most importantly to us is maintaining that infant baptism was false baptism. He
was also charged with wearing a hat in court proceedings because they asked him to take
it off and he refused, so they threw that charge on. I think the fine for him was 10
pounds. I did not do the conversion to what that is modern day, but it was a lot, and
he was also beaten for it and let go. The whole situation is just kind of emblems like
the whole conflict we had with the Puritans. I'll explain who they were because they do
play an important part in the whole story. Another interesting figure I stood upon is
Charles Chauncey, who was actually one of the, he's also in the 17th century. He was
one of the presidents of Harvard or dean of Harvard early on, and he also did preach that
there's a direct quote, "Baptism only to be by dipping and putting your whole body
under the water and sprinkling was unlawful." Both these men, Clark and Chauncey, preached
baptism, one that is by believers. It can only be done after a profession of faith,
and that it was you're going under, no sprinkling. In the article, they actually, the best argument,
the arguments for baby sprinkling and sprinkling in general are pretty lame, but I actually
saw the best argument I've ever seen for sprinkling was the Puritan said it's really cold out,
so we're not putting people in the water because that's terrible. This actually did not discourage
Chauncey, who baptized his twins and sent one of them into shock because he baptized
them in one of the rivers there and it was really cold. Afterwards, he still preached
that baptism was by full immersion, so he was faithful to that to the end. He was a
really cool, interesting guy. I actually want to learn more about him. But this brings me
to Puritans. I should explain some of these. Puritans are Anglicans. You know, the Church
of England, they are Anglican. The Puritans didn't want to break communion with the Church
of England. They wanted to reform it. They wanted to drop all appearances of Papist influence.
They wanted to bring it more into low church, congregation-led, whereas the Presbyterians
want Presbyterian-led, which is elders leading it. Puritans wanted congregation-led. The Baptists
were separatists that didn't want anything to do with the Church of England and gave
up and just left, at least in name. A lot of people will say we're Anabaptists. We're
not Anabaptists. We may be called Anabaptists because we share the rebaptizing with them.
The Anabaptists were more or less just deranged cultists that terrorized various European
towns throughout the 16th and 17th century. So the accusation that you're an Anabaptist
was a grave one and a lot of people took offense to it. It'd be like if someone says, "Oh,
you go door-to-door, soul-winning like Mormons," right? You take offense to that, like, "We're
not Mormons," right? You know, the Puritans would accuse these Baptists in Rhode Island
of being Anabaptists, and that's one of the charges they'd get arrested on was Anabaptists,
and they vehemently denied it. To Anabaptists, that rebaptizing was more of a cult initiation
than anything else. They were not great. If you want to learn what the Anabaptists heard about,
you can research what's called the Munster Rebellion, in which the Anabaptists took over
a town, and there are three metal cages hanging from the Munster Cathedral. Those metal cages were
used in the past. They still hang there, and the men that ended up in them deserved everything
that happened to them and why they ended up in there. But read that on your own thing. It is a
graphic story. So we're not Anabaptists. The first major doctrine that we hold is our name
baptism. Baptism is baptism. We believe that baptism is by full immersion after a profession
of faith. And what separates us from other groups is we do not expect an immediate reward. A lot of
that would be we're not baptismal regeneration. We don't believe that baptism is what saves you.
It is what the Bible says. It is a very important step, right? Go to Acts 8.36. I mean, you know
where this one's going. A lot of these Bible verses are really like simple. You probably have
them memorized out of accident. But as I said, I'm kind of answering this to my dad and some other
people who might not know these verses. And these are important verses, foundational verses. So
you all know, everyone knows the story Acts 8.36. And the Ethiopian eunuch, who's a believer,
but he's not saved. He's a believer. He fears God. And he asks Philip, and he says, "Here is water.
What doth hinder me to be baptized?" And Philip said, "If thou believest of all thine heart,
thou mayest." And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."
And he commanded the sheriff to stand still. And they went down both into the water, both Philip
and the eunuch, and he baptized them. And when they, I'll get to that one later. You see two
things. One, Ethiopian eunuch makes a profession of faith, similar to that of what we later find in
Romans 10. They proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and then Philip baptizes them. They
also go into the water. There's some artwork of the baptism of Jesus by John, where there's
a little pedestal in the lake. John's wearing a camel skin cloak, eating honey and locust.
He's definitely not baptizing people out of a fancy stone pedestal in the middle of the lake.
It's not happening. I get the feeling that he was plunging people into the water. There's definitely
a little bit more in line with his character, but here you do have they went both into water,
and they baptized them. It says, "When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord
caught away Philip, and Enoch saw him no more, and Ron was way rejoicing." I won't go into the
little tidbit about Ethiopian, but actually, actually I will. I was talking to... Ethiopia
is interesting in the Bible because you do have two characters who both fear God, the Queen of
Ethiopia, and this guy, hundreds of years later, actually after this, about a thousand years later,
there's actually a minor, I guess, the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is called a heresy,
but they're in Ethiopia, but there's a group of Ethiopians who were practicing believers baptism.
So they're out there still, I guess. The current Ethiopian church is Eastern Orthodox.
They are just Catholics who claim they stole the Ark of the Covenant. So the other, with Jesus's
baptism, they again go into the water. It says in Mark 1-10, "and straightway coming up out of the
water." You can't come up out of the water unless you're in the water. It's kind of implied. The
other important part is, "so why full immersion?" These verses, if you take it really allegorically,
they're just in the water. They could be reaching down pulling out a cup and pouring it over their
head, which is we come to the full reason why we believe it's full immersion. Go to Colossians 2-12.
Colossians 2-12. Give you some time to get there. Colossians 2 says, "Buried with him in baptism,
wherein I'll see you have risen with him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised
him from the dead." If you've witnessed one of our baptisms or any Baptist baptism, you'll know that
we... I don't know the exact lines. I've never done it, but it's buried with him in his likeness
and raised out. Again, the baptism is picturing the death, burial, and resurrection, the two,
you know, death, burial, and resurrection. So that's where we get it. Some other interesting
stories that I thought would complement this is Jonah and the whale. So we all know that Jonah
is a picture of Christ. It's called out in Matthew that this story is a picture of the death,
burial, and resurrection of Christ. I think it's Matthew 14. I don't know it offhand, but
Christ says this literally. He says there's no poetic. He says this is a picture. This is
a sign. You're going to see a sign like Jonah's. One of the things is Jonah goes into a water,
right? In Jonah 1.15, and they took Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased
to raging. So again, picturing the death barrel. Jonah wasn't literally baptized by a man of God,
but he was. He was going in the water there. There's actually a few stories of an Old Testament of
the people of God going into the water. I think the Jonah one is one of the clearer. Another one is,
of course, Noah's Ark. Also, you have believers and unbelievers, which is, again, shot at baptism
saves. No, baptism does not save because you have Ham, right? If baptism saved, this picture of it
would everyone would be happy, but no, Ham made it through, not saved, right? It's not a direct
picture, but I thought it was interesting that in both of the stories of, actually in all three of
the stories of the people of God going into the water, you have Jonah, you have the Ark, and then,
of course, you have Moses crossing the Red Sea. Come on, it's pretty obvious what that one's
picturing. None of these stories actually touch the water. I thought, in my mind, that was pretty
interesting. It almost pictures that, you know, in all the stories, it's a miracle that they did not
touch the water, and it's kind of picturing that with God, we should not taste of death, right?
The Noah's, no, not Noah. In Moses' Exodus, the Egyptians all got wiped out by the water,
and Noah's Ark, all the unbelievers and unrighteous got wiped out by the flood.
In Jonah, I mean, nothing bad happens to the fishermen. They all get saved,
which I think is probably why nothing bad happened. But yeah, again, they don't actually touch
the water. That's part of the story. We'll get to the objections to immersion, baptism,
and believers' baptism later, because there are some. And I said earlier, without reward,
meaning that we don't gain salvation. Some Pentecostals will say that you'll gain
holy powers, holy gifts. We believe that there were holy gifts, but that was only to the old,
I guess, the new churches. Kind of get them started, get them going. They got gifts to the
tongue. They can speak all the languages. They can heal people. It's not really a thing nowadays,
because the New Testament church is established. It's everywhere, but they kind of need that head
start. Go to Acts 19, or Acts 19 2 through 6, against baptismal regeneration, which teaches
that you have to be baptized in order to be saved, or that baptism saves you. We have an example of
people who got baptized just not being saved, right? This is a story of two of John the Baptist's
disciples approach Paul, and they have not even heard of the Holy Ghost, right? They have no
idea what was going on. Paul asks, "What were you baptized unto?" And they say, "Well, John's baptism,
right?" And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto his people
that they should believe on Him, which should come after Him, that is on Christ Jesus."
And then they get rebaptized, right? Paul baptizes them and then lays his hand upon them.
So, for example, these people were baptized, right, by John. I don't want, like, John definitely
preached the gospel to these people at some point. They really didn't know what was happening. It's
probably happening when you're out soul-winding and you preach the gospel, and they're just
obviously just not getting it. But I guess, you know, they slipped through and they got baptized,
but not saved. Well, if baptism saves us, these people would be regenerated. They weren't.
Some of the objections to one of the core beliefs of baptism by immersion, what I've heard is,
first go to, you don't have to go there, 1st Peter 3.21. A lot of people say they'll take this
very plain reading of Peter and say, "The like figure, whereunto even baptism doth also now
save us," and it'll stop there, and it says, "Save us," but then Peter explains it, and he opens a
side statement, "Not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but of the answer of good conscience
towards God." There's two ways you could take the putting away the filth of the flesh, and that's
not being the point, is you could take it by the physical meaning that this isn't a bath, right,
that you're not getting, you're not washing the dirt off. You could also take it the more spiritual
meaning of the filth of the flesh being sin, saying, and both I guess would be correct,
not the putting away the flesh, you're not, you're not, this is not cleaning your sin.
He says this is an answer of good conscience towards God, right, he gives us what baptism is for,
this is your first step as a new disciple, as a new believer, is to get baptized,
God asked us to, right, it's pretty easy. And then if you were to take that the parentheses out,
the verse would read, which would clear a lot of, a lot of confusion away, the like figure,
whereunto even baptism, doth also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes you actually, you have to read the whole verse and all, all verses to really get the full
meaning or else you just get confused. The other objection I've actually heard personally is Acts
238. This one, you've probably heard this one. And Peter said unto them, "Repent, comma, and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, comma, and he
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." You've probably all heard people say they have to be
baptized for the remission of sins, therefore he must be baptized in order to be saved. That's just
a fundamental lack of English language knowledge. I think it's ignorant, like intentionally ignorant,
because we all know this, right? The "for" is, we use this in modernism. This isn't an issue of,
well, the King James is supposedly old-fashioned and this is just archaic English. We use this
still today. Famously, the example I thought of was when the Texans would storm Santa Ana
after the Alamo. They famously shouted for the Alamo, as in because of the Alamo, and they
weren't delivering a parcel to the Alamo. They were saying, because of what happened at the Alamo,
we're going to once is a decisive Texan victory on that day. Again, this is saying, "Be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ. Alternatively, because of the remission of sins,
because sins have been remitted by what He did, you should be baptized." This is a good faith thing.
Also, He gives the correct order here, "Repent," not meaning repent of your sins, it means return
from your unbelief. "Be baptized because Christ has died for all of your sins and you shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost." Again, this is the gift of the Holy Ghost, not the Holy Ghost.
This is the temporary, I guess, nitrous in the new church to kind of get it going. That's what the
gift is. There will also be a lot of people walking around with being able to speak every language,
naturally healing people, but that's not the case. Those are old gifts. Again, baptism is very
important, but later on in Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 1-14, Paul actually tells these
people, like he says, "I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius.
Let any should say that I baptized my own name, and I baptized also the house of Siphanus."
And if we were saved by baptism, or if this was placed on any part of our salvation,
he wouldn't be downplaying the importance here. He'd be upplaying it saying, "Look,
I'm glad that I baptized." He's saying here, "Look, I didn't baptize many of you. This isn't
important." And later on, he'll say, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel,
not with the wisdom of words. Let the cross of Christ should be made of none of facts." He's
saying, "Look, I wasn't sent out to baptize people." If baptism was part of salvation,
this would not be here, right? He would say, "For Christ sent me to baptize," right? It's not the
case. Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Baptism is not part of the gospel.
It comes after the good news. I got some water. Somebody volunteer for water detail? There you go.
Consequence of singing now, preaching is kind of dry. Our next point is why IFB is fundamental.
I kind of disagree with the notion of the IFB, because it should all just be Baptist. Like,
historically, independence and fundamentalism were one and the same with Baptist. This isn't like
some new thing. So on that grounds, I kind of object to IFB. It kind of implies that we're the
ones that have just broken off and gone our own way. When the case is all the other liberal things
have broken off from Baptist. If you want a more complete sermon on this, I think Bill preached
recently on fundamentalism. But still, so what is fundamentalism as a movement? I talked about the
history of Baptists as a movement. Where did the F come from in our in IFB? It's actually very
recent. The concept of fundamentalism was a response to increased liberalism in the Christian
churches in America around the turn of the 20th century, so around 18 to 1920s. Depending on this
whole concept, it's across different, I guess, Protestant, non-Protestant faiths. But you
predominantly see it in the Presbyterians and the Baptists, who are the ones that really push it.
Presbyterians used to actually be kind of hardcore, and now they're not.
So we're the only ones that are left on that hardcore fundamental. They've gone downhill very
far. But there still were some fundamental Presbyterians. If you want a good recommendation,
you have Ian Paisley out of Ulster, Northern Ireland, part of Great Britain,
who's a Presbyterian. But if I played one of his sermons, he would be indistinguishable from a
Baptist. He preaches just like the kind of the old Baptist pastors. They have that very up and down
cadence to their voice. He remained King James only until the day he died. I think he's friends
with like Bob Jones Sr. or something. I don't know who he's friends with, but he was a fundamental.
I believe he was saved, right? He preached the gospel. He also famously called the Pope the
Antichrist in the House of Commons in England. And yeah, he was a real treat. He was a real defender,
but he was fundamental, right? Fundamentalism was not something new. The concept of taking
things seriously was not invented in 1900. Before 1900, pretty much every Christian church in America
and the world was fundamental, okay? And fundamental, again, is just taking the Bible seriously.
That's all it is, right? These things aren't just... There are some allegories here, but they all
physically happened, right? We have no doubt that the events of Revelation, I guess, have happened,
it will happen. We have no doubt that what happened to Job was real. It's easy to take the historical
books, like Kings and Acts, at their face value. While a lot of people falter at the more poetic
books, as I said, Job and Revelation, those, I guess, have been history and will be history. It's
kind of weird in Revelation. But again, we should contend for this, right? And Fight Hard, that's
one of the famous fundamentalists, J. Frank Norris, would push for. He has a lot of great sermons on
evolution. That was one of the liberalisms sneaking in, was evolution at the time. And he said,
look, this goes against Genesis, not having it. He called it, I think he called it some German
communist stuff. He was pretty sure that evolution would lead to communism. It wasn't wrong, okay?
So he probably shouldn't have shot that person, but it was real self-defense in court.
Some Bible to back it up, so why are we fundamental? It's pretty common sense, right?
It's an instruction manual, manual supposedly inspired by God. You should take it seriously,
so a lot of Christians don't, but because we're fundamental, we also just have Bible verses to
back up something that should be self-evident. In Jude 1-3, it says, "Beloved, what I gave
all diligence to write unto you the common salvation, it was needful for me to write
unto you and exhort you, that you should earnestly contend for the faith." Right? "Earnestly contend
for the faith." Doesn't mean sit back and try to explain away hard to read passages, saying, "Oh,
that's just a product of the time. That doesn't apply now." Right? "Earnestly contend for the
faith, which was once delivered unto the saints." Saints are everyone who's saved in the Bible,
right? All the prophets, a lot of the kings, but certainly all the prophets were saints,
right? And Moses, he was a saint, okay? Not in the Catholic, like we should venerate him.
He was sanctified, right? He gave us the Deuterocanonical books. A lot of hard things
to read in there, right? But as part of our faith, that was delivered unto the saints,
and we should contend for that. That means standing against evolution, liberal ideas of,
as I said, dismissing things as allegorical or just purely cultural references, right? Again,
Proverbs 30 verse 5, every word of God is pure, right? All of this is pure. All of this is good.
As Paul told Timothy, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine,
for proof, correction, for instruction, and righteousness." All scripture, not some of it,
not the parts that are easy to read at the time, not the parts that won't offend the congregation,
all of it is given by inspiration of God, even the hard parts, right? Even the story of Sodom and
Gomorrah and Judges, where a similar thing happens in Judges, I think also in Judges 18, it happens.
These are all good for doctrine. Second Peter, Peter also says, "For prophecy came not in old
time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they are moved by the Holy Ghost." Again,
saying scripture, all of it is inspired, right? Again, if all these stories, a lot of people,
even the liberal churches, will still read these stories out on Sunday that provides some sort of
moral lesson, but they will skip over the law, which is almost just a condensed version of the
stories, right? We have Leviticus and Numbers, which give the law to us, and then we have the
next, like, I think you have the rest of the Old Testament having these stories play out, right?
The moral of all these stories and, like, kings is the law, right? That's what the moral of the
story is, right? There's nothing really new, right? You just see these stories play out.
So what happens when you commit adultery? Well, you have the story of David and Bathsheba.
The moral of the story, adultery is wrong, murder is wrong, that's contained in a law.
But a lot of these people will just cut the condensed part out and just stick with the
stories. But we shouldn't fall down that trap. Baptists have written, if you didn't know,
not only did we get Rhode Island Charter and therefore statehood, the whole First Amendment
was pushed by Baptists. I'll get to that in a second, independent. If you didn't know,
Baptists pretty much forced the First Amendment, as we know it, into the Constitution. Originally
there's going to be five churches. Baptists were one of them. Congregational, which are the
Puritans, what they became. If you didn't know, the current successor to the Puritans are United
Church of Christ. That's why they don't play music. They've kept that in, and look where
they are now. So, who got the last laugh? Baptist did. He may have beat John Clark, but you're now
ordaining women and gays, so take it. But that's just a lesson that even the Puritans who were
fundamental in our accounts, they took this stuff very seriously. You know, they, little by little,
they let in the leaven, and now they're doomed. One of the reasons they're doomed. We get into
our next session. It all kind of fits together why these are important. It's independent, right? So
at this church, and most Baptist churches are actually independent, that would mean we're
independent from any creed, denomination, or convention. Even though the conventions,
Southern Baptist Convention is very loose, they still shouldn't be a part of that kind of stuff.
It's okay to have friends. Like if you're friends, if you're friends of a pastor, right,
it's going to be, they're doing that right now, right. They're all friends, they're preaching
together, you know, this is something, but it's not a convention. You can leave at any time,
as last year has shown us. And what is the trouble with depending on any creed is,
this is part where it gets really more historical, because history, European Christian history has
taught us what happens when you depend on a denomination, on a creed. So again, you have the
Lollards who are, you know, famously John Wycliffe was kind of part of it, he kind of wasn't, but they
are 1385, so 14th century England. And their complaints open up is, "We poor men, treasurers
of Christ and his apostles, denounce to the Lords and the Commons of Parliament certain conclusions
and truth for the reformation of the Holy Church of England, which has been blind and leprous many
years by the maintenance of the proud prilicy borne up with flatterings of private religion,
which is multiplied to a great charge and onerous to the people here in England."
More interestingly, this is where it gets really interesting, but, "When the Church of England
began to dote in temporality after her stepmother, the great Church of Rome, and churches were slain
by the appropriation to diverse places." What they're complaining about is, one, you'll notice
that they're treating the Church of England as a separate entity from the Church of Rome.
England has always had a history of, you know, ignoring what Rome told them to do,
and Rome couldn't really do anything about it, because France was also ignoring what they did.
So the whole theory that Rome was one collective before that dang Martin Luther, that's just fake.
Rome was unimportant in the Christian world for the first thousand years, and then as soon as
they tried to centralize authority, northern Germany and England left, as well as France almost
leaving multiple times. France actually had their own pope at one point, so there you go, there you
go Catholics. But they're trying to reform the law, they're trying to form the Church of England,
it did not happen, and then it kind of shows the problem of being dependent, right? Their movement
was dependent on Parliament, you know, and the Church of England, they're almost one in the same,
they're still a state, not a theocracy, but a state backed religion, and they failed, and a lot
of them were rounded up and killed because the government was meddling in Church affairs,
and the Church was meddling in Government affairs, which goes, nobody's happy when that happens.
Baptists have always stood for Church independence, the famously separation of Church and state.
A lot of people get tied up and say that this is an endorsement of an atheist government,
where the government is, you cannot have any religious, anything in the government. This is
not the case. They were perfectly fine with Christians serving in government. They just
didn't want what the Puritans were pushing, the Congregationalists, which was a religious test.
You had to be approved to preach in Massachusetts. They were almost like a Congregationalist
theocracy by 1780 and 1770, and they were fighting against this because they disagreed
fundamentally on the practice of pedobaptism, which is baptizing infants. They disagreed,
that's the technical term for it, but they fought hard against this. And that was the
sole reason they had so many problems, was the Baptists would not baptize infants, right? That
is why John Clark was arrested and beaten, was because he refused to acknowledge infant baptism.
You have all these characters, that's why, right? Let's all lie, a lot of the
European martyrs in the faith were arrested and killed, was because they refused to accept
infant baptism. One of the famous, actually, Baptists who pushed for the freedom of religion
was the Reverend Isaac Bacchus, who wrote in a chapter called "An Appeal to the Public for
Religious Liberty Against the Oppression of the Present Day." They didn't really do terse titles,
they had a full-sentence description, that's the title of their document, but here's a quote from
him, from it says, "Our legislature claim a power to compel every town and parish within their
jurisdiction," he's talking about Massachusetts, "to set up and maintain a pedo-Baptist worship
among them. Although it is well known that infant baptism is never expressed in the Bible,
only is upheld by men's reasonings that are chiefly drawn from Abraham's covenant,
which the Holy Ghost calls the covenant of circumcision," Acts 7 and 8, "and as circumcision
was one of the handwriting of ordinances which Christ has blotted out, where did any state ever
get any right to compel their subjects to set up a worship upon that covenant?" He was very
interesting document. I can give you the title of it. It's definitely worth the read. He's arguing
for religious liberty and a push of a separation of church and state, but he's actually just not
anti-government in general, pro-government. He later ratified the constitution. He just does not want
a state-mandated religion, that's all. Why does he want this? Well, he enumerates it. He says,
"Now who can hear Christ declare that his kingdom is not of this world, and yet believe that this
blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him? For through their laws call
them orthodox ministers, yet grand test of their orthodoxy is the major vote of the people,
be they saints or sinners, believers or unbelievers. This appears plain in the foregoing quotation."
And another of their learned writer lately says, "It is the congregation and its parical congregational
capacity that the law considers." Right? What he's saying is if you have a test of religion,
which Massachusetts had, you're being judged by the people. Your capacity on how spiritual
and how Christian you are is based on whether or not you can find people that agree with you.
Right? And it kind of sounds good in theory. Right? I'm sure if we could have just a Christian,
only Christians are allowed to hold government positions, it might be a better place. Right?
But the problem is who decides who are Christians. Right? Generally speaking, it may be good when
you're in control. Chances are you're not going to be in control. Right? If you round up all the
Christians in America and say, you know, send us 10 people, chances are you're not going to be bad. Right?
So they want this separation, say government should not have any authority on how churches
are governed. And of course, they held back on ratifying the Constitution until they got their
way. So they ended up holding the United States hostage on that. Isaac Baucus would later on
ratify the Constitution, cast a vote. One of the issues again of forming these denominations is
you start imparting traditions onto the group of people. Traditions can either be kind of nice,
right? We have a tradition of having an Easter potluck. Does anyone disagree with that? I like
it. I really like Easter potluck. That's a good tradition to have. The problem is you start creating
these traditions. Chances are, give it 100 years, 200 years, and it becomes a game of telephone of
what they truly meant, right? And soon that optional Easter potluck, which is really nice,
becomes a mandate. You must have an Easter potluck. You must have these things, right?
Because somebody has brought in like one year, somebody brings like, um, what's a really nasty
food? Haggis, right? Someone brings Haggis, right? And now it's a whole controversy. Somebody brought
Haggis, stunk up the whole place. And now, now your denomination has to come up saying,
so these are the approved foods. That's how it goes. And eventually, 200 years later, nobody
knows what they're doing anymore. They've lost the whole spirit. And now you can only bring
these certain foods, right? Somebody complains. And now we can't have deviled eggs. That's it.
I'm becoming a separatist. We're leaving this. I'll do it for those. But yeah, Mark 7 is the
only one that I actually don't have. I figured out how to copy and paste verses into my notes,
so I don't have to turn there. But this is the only one I didn't do. So traditions are one of
these things that we're warned about. Usually in the New Testament, they're viewed as negative,
especially in the Gospels. All of them, all of them. So this whole chapter is about the Pharisees
kind of overriding the commandments with their traditions, taking them, and Jesus rebukes them.
It says in verse 7, "Howbeit in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men." As I just said, over time people forget the spirit of the law and they go with the letter
of the law. When you have men teaching, trying to teach the letter of the law, you end up with the
Pharisees who spent all day, you have all these scribes and lawyers, figuring out all day of all
these different ways of how the law worked, all these different what-if scenarios, and teaching
these what-if scenarios as doctrine. In verse 13, "making the word of God of none effect through
your tradition, which you have delivered, and many such things do you." Again, one of the issues
that the Baptists had with the Puritans is sprinkling babies. Again, this is just a tradition
they kept over. There was a holdover from the Anglican Church practicing Roman rites. The
Puritans kept it on. They kept on practicing these Anglican traditions, and they're teaching these
traditions as doctrine, charging Baptists with crimes if they baptized, rebaptized believers,
charging them with the libelous, slanderous claim that they were Anabaptist cultists.
The governor of Massachusetts, I think it was Massachusetts, during the trial of John Clark,
he called him Anabaptist trash and wanted him dead just because he wanted to baptize believers,
not sprinkle babies. Again, this is the problem with traditions. You get off the track and going,
no matter how good it is, right? I'm sure when the people, the Baptists who founded the Southern
Baptist Convention, they probably had good intention in their hearts. But over 100 years,
the people who originally founded it were no longer there. And now look where it is now. It's
kind of this liberal Baptist order club. A lot of the fundamental, independent fundamental Baptists
broke away and left it for that reason, right? Yeah, so, okay, I should have proofread this thing.
In Isaiah 820, it says, "To the law, to the testimony, if they speak not according to this
word, it is because there is no light in them." And this is talking about prophets, false prophets
specifically. It kind of gives this, well, even if you have a tradition that is with God,
it kind of becomes redundant. Why not just go with the word of God and not have a tradition
based upon? Because it just gives more room for error. In Colossians 2, 6, and it says,
"As ye have therefore received Christ the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him,
and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men,
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him, which is the head of principality and all power."
Again, this is saying, you start following traditions, you start following the philosophy
of man, one of the errors that Baptist follows. A lot of Baptists are reformed, a lot of them
Calvinists, which is a philosophy of man. I think pretty much all these Baptists I actually
mentioned are to some extent reformed Baptists. Oh man, refills. Yeah, pit crew here. I don't
really, I've mixed feelings on Calvinism in general. It goes along where, at its best,
if you take Calvinism at its absolute best, if you give it all the benefit of the doubt,
it's confusing. At its worst, it's damn little heresy. At its best, it's not completely heresy,
but it's just confusing. It just confuses people and they go off the rails and then they go into
all these weird heresies of Calvinism, so they get lazy. Again, that's a picture of what happens
when you start dwelling in these vain philosophies and traditions of men. You just go off the rails,
inevitably. And one of the reasons why Baptists, you know, we've been in America since before
America. We were in colonies from the very beginning and one of the reasons why it was
was the ability to stay independent. When churches went off the rails, they just disappeared.
Everyone left and went to another church. You don't have this issue like the Puritans,
when they became Congregationalists and then went off the rails as a domination. As I said,
they're the United Church of Christ now. They're gone. They're done. There's nothing good in that
church at all. But that's the problem with denominations is you're all in the same boat
and the boat's inevitably going to sink. Whereas if you have many boats, some of them get through.
And that's how convoys in World War II work, by the way. More history lessons. You get that one
for free. Yeah, if you send many boats, most of them would get through, but if you put all your
war supplies in one boat, it's going to get sunk. I'm trying to get to the end here. As I say,
my voice is going. I've worked all day at work. So my voice is starting to fail. So I should
probably finish this one up. But the conclusion to this is Baptists are an old American church group.
We hold to the doctrine of believer's baptism, to fundamentalism, and to independence. With these,
we've managed to stick around. We've managed to influence other American churches. For better or
for worse, keep them. If you wonder, "Oh, if you go to the evangelical church, why does their service
look almost kind of like ours?" They have the same structure. They sing, they have a sermon,
they sing, and they leave. It's a lot lamer, but it's kind of the same thing. They practice
believers' baptism, right? It is because we've had an extraordinary amount of influence just by
maintaining the faith. We've been fundamental, and it kind of rubs off on people by osmosis, I guess.
Other people pick this up, and they kind of stick with it because they kind of want to emulate
what we have. They don't really do that well, but I guess Prophets are trying. Some of these
evangelical churches, these Bible churches, we do run into saved members. They cross roads every now
and then. I think it's about 50/50 on crossroads. What I said, the conclusion is because we've
managed to stay fundamental, stay independent, and stick with what the Bible says. I kind of
pictured with baptism, staying with what the Bible says about baptism. We've managed to stay around
for 400 years in America, relatively unchanged. We haven't had any major downgrades like the
Presbyterians who are now ordaining women. Even the conservative Presbyterians are now
very liberal. The Episcopalians are just, I mean, it's Episcopalians, but they used to be hardcore.
They used to be Anglicans who just were patriots. They just became Episcopalians because they didn't
want the king as the head of their church. But they used to be hardcore. They used to take things
seriously, and they let the fundamentalism slip. They were dependent on outside governing body,
and they went downhill. It's the story of every church in America. That's it. If you've got nothing
else out of this, at least now you know that Rhode Island was founded by Baptists. That's something.
If you've ever been to Rhode Island, there's not much to it. Kind of nestled in between the
Massachusetts and Connecticut. Don't take what we have here for granted. A lot of people fought
very hard for what we have now. When we're out soul winning, we might not see it, but we're
participating in the First Amendment, right? Imagine if we had the religious test nowadays,
right? Four out of five of those religions that were mentioned in the original draft of the
Constitution are terrible, right? They're awful. I think it's Episcopalians, Congregationalists,
Baptists, I think Methodists, and I think there's one other, right? Do you want to be judged on if
you can hold political anything on those five denominations, right? Nothing is just awful,
but we push for religious toleration, and now we can enjoy the fruits of our labor. We get to go
out. We have the First Amendment, which is amazing. We have Rhode Island. I don't know,
I guess we got Family Guy out of that. Rhode Island really hasn't done much for us.
But we got the First Amendment and nothing else. Hopefully you had some appreciation of the hard
work that had been done by Baptists in America. Again, Baptists had come about with the founding
of America. They were always kind of around by different names. I forgot to mention Protestants.
A lot of people will call us Protestants. We're not really Protestants. I wouldn't take it as an
insult. I mean, most people think Protestants are just not Catholic. I guess we're Protestant by
that metric. We're not Catholic, but we're not Anabaptists or not Protestants. We don't hold to
any creeds. We mostly agree with the Nicene Creed, except for the last part, which is about the
Catholic Church, but most of it we kind of agree with. But we're not beholden to the Apostles' creeds.
We're not beholden to the Baptist's confession of faith. We're just beholden to the Bible.
And with that, we'll pray. Get out of here before my voice just goes.
Lord, thank you for blessing this sermon. Give us travelers' mercies to those abroad.
Help everyone get home in the dark and in the rain, to make sure everyone gets home safely.
You just have to pray, amen.
Well, in one second, Gabe.