I spend a lot of time just looking at church websites sometimes if I'm going to be, well
mainly before I pastored, I would be working on Wednesday nights, or I wouldn't work on
Wednesday nights, but I'd be working on Wednesdays in other areas, like I'd work Monday through
Friday out of town, and so I'd want to find a good church to go to on Wednesday night.
Now I never do that because I never miss the service here, so I always, even if I have
to just fly back for church and fly back out like I did this week, that's what I do because
I'm not going to miss church, because it's important to me.
But when I was not the pastor, if I were working out of town, I'd just find a good church
to go to wherever I was, whatever part of town I was in.
I'd find a good church to go to.
Well, I'd be on the internet looking at their doctorates.
Also, we have a directory on our website of churches, of Independent Fundamental Baptist
Church.
It has two criteria.
They must be King James only, and they must have some kind of a soul-winning program.
Those are the two criteria, and if I just don't like them, I don't include a meter.
And so, the churches are on their list, and so I get people that email me all the time,
because there's a lot of traffic on our website.
So a lot of people email me, like almost on a weekly basis, sometimes even daily basis,
"Would you include our church on your directory?"
Okay?
So what do I do?
I go there and I look at their doctrinal statement, I look at their information and see if it's
the right kind of church that I would want to recommend to people.
And it's something to help people, like if they're going to some distant state, they
can easily find a good church by looking at that directory on my website.
It has churches that are in the ballpark.
And so it's funny to me, when I look at these churches' doctrinal statements that are independent
fundamental Baptist churches, of course, they're all the same.
They're copied and pasted.
You know, they didn't write their own doctrinal statement.
It's all just copy and paste, copy and paste.
And there's really only about three.
You know, you look at like a hundred church websites, and you've looked at some of these,
right?
Have you noticed the copy and paste?
There's really, you look at a hundred and there's like three, because they just copy
and paste.
Ours, you know, I wrote that myself.
Remember, it looks like it was written by a first grader, is what somebody said.
And I, you know, and again, like I said this morning, it's written so that a first grader,
like you, mentality can understand it.
But this is one that you'll see all the time.
Real common.
It's all the S's.
Right?
Scriptures, sovereign God, son, sin, sacrifice, salvation, service, second coming.
And so I've seen this one everywhere.
And this is just representative.
When I was, I was looking through this and I just want to pick this one part of this.
Now most of this is actually pretty good.
Like I actually agreed with most of this.
And at the end of each section, you know, it says how Jesus is God, the Bible is the
Word of God, God is the Trinity, and the sacrifice on the cross, salvation, service, second coming.
Okay.
But when I got the second coming, okay, there was like six things that are unscriptural.
And the funny thing about this is that at the bottom they have the verses that they
got this from.
And we're going to look at those verses because they weren't even looking anywhere near those
verses when they wrote this paragraph.
Okay.
That's what's funny about this.
Let's look at this.
The Lord Jesus' second coming.
This is the doctrinal saving.
You'll find this all over.
I've found this a million times.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is coming again in the air at any moment.
Okay.
There's your first error right there.
To catch up His church.
There's your second error.
And to reward their service, the unbelievers left behind will go through a period called
the tribulation, error number three, after which Christ shall visibly return to earth.
Well, no, because He visibly returns the first time, error number four.
To set up His Kingdom for 1,000 years of righteous rule.
After this, unbelievers of all ages will stand at the great white throne to be judged and
cast into the lake of fire, separated from God forever.
Are we on error number five?
Separated from God forever?
That's wrong.
While believers spend eternity in the fullness of joy in heaven with the Lord.
That's error number six.
None of that's true, okay?
Now, the rest of this is really true, and it's from the Bible, and it's all based on
the Bible.
We go into that last point, and we just, you're now, wait, you just finished the sixth point,
you're now entering the twilight zone.
There's a signpost up ahead.
Next stop, the twilight zone.
Now, why did we enter the twilight zone on that point?
All in one word, tradition.
Tradition is why.
Because this is the tradition.
Everything I just read to you in that statement would be agreed upon, "Amen, brother!
Preach it, brother!"
You know, in these independent fundamental Baptist services.
"That's right!
Good!"
You know, and they just love it.
"Yes!
Glory!"
OK.
But is it reality?
No, it's tradition.
OK.