Hello and welcome to the broadcast. We call it plain and simple. We're going to start a new series today concerning understanding the times in which we are living. Stay tuned for our broadcast today. you 1 Chronicles chapter 12 verse number 32 talks about men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. To have an understanding is to have the ability to make judgment concerning any particular situation. Now, we're living in an age today when things are changing. On October the 7th, 1955, I received Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I began my Christian walk involved in what we call evangelicalism. However, due to the erosion of Bible doctrine and Bible principles in the evangelical movement, I moved my support to the fundamental independent Baptist movement back in the 60s. Well, in the past 40 years, there's been many changes in our movement. I never imagined I would see the day that it would be necessary to warn about the erosion of doctrine in our movement. As a matter of fact, doctrinally, our movement is far worse than the evangelical movement was when I got out of it. Now, be assured that it is my desire to be a fundamentalist in the Bible's sense of the term. However, because I am fundamental, I can no longer consider myself a fundamentalist in our common definition of the term because our term is vague. I want to strongly express that this series is not an attack. We are in trouble. We. I emphatically say we need to realize that we are in trouble. I use the word movement in this series several times and therein lies our problem. Our man-made movement has taken over the responsibilities that God has given to the local church. The Bible plainly says the house of God, which is the church of the living God, is the pillar and the ground of the truth. Our mandate from God was to do the Lord's work through His local churches. We have chosen to ignore God's way and do it our own way, and we are paying an exceeding price on that today. Now, how did our fundamental movement get founded? How did it get started? Well, our movement was founded on the faulty foundation of human reasoning right from day one. Reasoning is the power of the mind to think and make judgments by the process of logic. On several occasions in the scriptures we find examples of those who reasoned among themselves. They were trying to understand and make judgments by the process of logic and their human reasoning was always faulty. Let me give you a few examples. Matthew 16 and 7, they reasoned among themselves. Matthew 21, 25, they reasoned with themselves. Mark 2 and 8, they so reasoned with themselves. 8 and 16, they reasoned among themselves. Mark 11 and 31, they reasoned with themselves. Luke 20 and 5, they reasoned with themselves. 20 and 14, they reasoned among themselves. Luke 9 and 46, there arose a reasoning among them. Now the only safe way to reason about scriptural things is to follow the example that we have from Paul the Apostle, who said that he reasoned out of the scriptures, Acts chapter 17 and verse number 2. We reasoned back here when we began our fundamental movement that we needed an ism. You see, in the early 1900s there was liberalism, there was modernism, there was communism, there was socialism, there was a bunch of isms. So we came up with the idea that we better get ourselves an ism, and we called it fundamentalism. And the outcome of our reasoning was a series of articles that were printed that were known as the Fundamentals. Now, the Preface to the Fundamentals was written by R. A. Torrey, and it says, the oversight of the selection of articles to be included in the Fundamentals, that series of articles that they wrote, was given to a special committee of men who were known to be sound in the faith. Now listen, I want to read that again. R. A. Torrey said, the oversight of the selection of articles to be included in the Fundamentals was given to a special committee of men who were known to be sound in the faith. Well, we'll see about that. They reasoned that bigger is better. Our special committee, armed with a logical humanistic reasoning that bigger is better, decided to bypass God's plan for local churches and formed a special committee. And their special committee had Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, very few Baptists, and some other no-name interdenominational groups. Some sprinkled babies and called it baptism, and that was who was involved in our special committee. That included C.I. Schofield, who was divorced in 1883, remarried three months later and was ordained as a pastor in a congregational church the same year. Now our special committee, who according to R. A. Torrey, were all sound in the faith, obviously ignored the fact that three times in the Word of God we are told that a divorced man is not qualified to be a pastor. Schofield was one of their friends, and he was very, very influential. So that's probably why these founders of fundamentalism ignored the Scriptures. Let's not worry about what the Bible says. And so here we have the beginning of what we call today our para-church ministries. The Niagara Bible Conference contributed to the rise and spread of other conferences. Speakers began promoting Bible schools and other para-church ministries. The Niagara meeting inspired Christian businessmen to become generous donors to Bible colleges and publications and other ministries outside of the authority of God's local church. The conference also resulted in a 14-point creed, otherwise known as the Niagara Creed. Now, point 10 of the creed said, we are responsible to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, rising above all sectarian prejudices and denominational bigotry. Now, can you imagine that? Listen to that again. Point 10 of their creed included, we are responsible to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, rising above all sectarian prejudices and denominational bigotry. Now, they bypassed the local church, they bypassed baptism. Nothing is mentioned in their creed promoting the local church or baptism as these two important doctrines could not be a part of their new para-church movement if they were going to keep the unity. For the first time in 2,000 years, God's pastors and God's local churches and God's instructions concerning baptism were pushed aside and our new movement became the spearhead of what we call fundamentalism. So baptism was reduced to a denominational bigotry by our fundamental forefathers. They dumped the truth for unity. The goal was to keep the unity. Anyone who suggested anything contrary to their creed would be guilty of sectarian prejudices and denominational bigotry. What is sectarian? It is a religious belief typically regarded as heretical. What is a prejudice? It is opinion based on reason. What is bigotry? A bigot is intolerant toward those who hold different opinions. Opinions! And so now, you're a heretic if you're going to cause trouble concerning one-third of the Great Commission, which is baptism. You're prejudiced if your opinion is not based on reasoning. and you're intolerant toward those who hold different opinions, then you're a bigot. So, prejudices and bigotry. For the sake of unity, R. A. Torrey, A. C. Dixon, W. B. Riley, Louis Ferry Schaeffer, C. I. Schofield, and other so-called fundamentalists agreed to reduce the major Bible doctrine concerning the local church and baptism to a different opinion. For the sake of unity, we approved a creed that determined that those who were true to the doctrine of baptism by immersion were promoting bigotry. We sacrificed Bible doctrine for the sake of unity with baby baptizers, and we had the gall to call it fundamentalism. Our special committee compiled the works of many writers and issued them in 12 volumes. These 12 volumes were later printed in a four-volume set. They sent what they considered to be the fundamentals of the Word of God to about 300,000 ministers and missionaries and other workers. in different parts of the world. It is very interesting at that particular time when this fundamental movement began that D.L. Moody, Gypsy Smith, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon were three of the most well-known and used-of-God men on the face of the earth, and they had nothing to do with this movement. That did not happen by chance. Well, the fact that our special committee included a group of leaders with many different doctrinal beliefs indicates their reasoning was humanistic rather than scriptural. Had they reasoned together out of the Word of God and used the Word of God as their foundation, they never would have compromised to form a group of men with so many different opinions concerning Bible doctrine. The fact is, if they had checked the scriptures, they never would have bypassed God's pastors and local churches in forming a committee in the first place. the committee and their universal church. One of the contributors on our special committee was Anglican Bishop John Charles Ryle. He wrote an article in the Fundamentals concerning what he called the true church, referring, of course, to the so-called universal church. He supported his position with absolutely no scriptures, none. What else could he do? There's no scriptures to be found to support that position. Ryle began his discussion with the question, do you belong to the one true church? His question plainly suggests that your local church is not the true church. Referring to their committee, Ryle also said, its members are entirely agreed on the weightier matters of religion, for they are all taught by one spirit. They are all agreed on the weightier matters of the scriptures. If the truth be told, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Baptists were not of one mind concerning baptism. However, the truth could not be told if they were going to keep the unity of the group. I repeat, keeping the unity of the group was more important to R. A. Torrey, A. C. Dixon, W. B. Riley, Louis Ferry Schaefer, and C. I. Schofield than defending the important doctrines of baptism and the local church. And they called it fundamentalism. Baptism is one-third of the command of Christ in Matthew 28 and 19. However, nothing, absolutely nothing, is written in all twelve volumes of their Fundamentals about baptism, and for the sake of unity, our compromising Fundamentalists remain silent about one-third of the Great Commission. Ryle said its members are entirely agreed on the weightier matters of religion. Therefore, the local church and baptism are not considered by our fundamental forefathers to be weightier matters. Ryle went so far as to say they were all taught this wicked compromise of the scriptures by the Spirit. Leander Whitcomb Munhall, a Methodist evangelist, wrote in the Fundamentals concerning the doctrines that must be emphasized. He did not mention baptism, and neither did any other writer in the Fundamentals mention baptism. Our special committee should never have agreed to disagree on Bible doctrine. Fundamentalism began with a compromising committee of pragmatic interdenominational leaders who determined that believing fundamental doctrine was not important to be a fundamentalist. They found a better way. The colleges soon came along, the local church was pushed in the background, paraministries became the important thing, colleges, newspapers, magazines, and the movement itself became the new focus. Local pastors were reduced to look like something that wasn't necessary, and the God-given title of pastor, which was far less impressive than president, or professor, or administrator, or director, or editor, and such like, was pushed aside. Any ministry that is organized outside of the local church is not part of the church, it is a movement. God has not given any instructions for a movement, so everybody can go and do that, which is right in their own eyes, because there's no directions for a movement, and that is how we got into this mess we call apostasy today. We just need to get back to the local church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth. To end tomorrow, we'll have our second in this series on understanding the times. so so you