CHURCH HISTORY II



CHURCH HISTORY II

EXAM # 5

STUDY GUIDE

Lecture 38

AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES USA Considered mainline; The name of the Northern Baptist Convention was changed in 1950 to the American Baptist Convention.

BAPTIST GENERAL CONFERENCE They operate the Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota. The BGC has Swedish roots and is often referred to as the ‘Old Swedish Baptists’. John Piper pastors a BGC church.

REFORMED BAPTISTS began as a breakaway group from the SBC on the issue of ‘Sovereign Grace’ (the Reformed group was Calvinistic on this issue).

CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST ASSOCIATION (aka CBAmerica) they emerged out of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy in the Northern Baptist Convention.

Landmark Missionary Baptists

The American Baptist Association, Baptist Missionary Association, and independent Landmark Missionary Baptist associations are direct heirs of the Landmark movement, which arose in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1850s under the leadership of James R. Graves, and others. They believe much like independent Baptist churches believe today. They usually contain the word ‘Missionary’ in the name of their church. They are primarily located in the states of the ‘old Southwest’.

AMERICAN BAPTIST ASSOCIATION Ben Bogard was instrumental in the beginning of this association. Headquartered in Texarkana.

BAPTIST MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Headquartered in Little Rock.

INDEPENDENT LANDMARK BAPTIST ASSOCIATIONS/Churches (Direct-Mission)

These congregations practice direct missions, that is, they send missionary support directly to the missionary, who is not supervised by any home board.

Separatist Fundamentalist Baptist (NBC roots)

Fundamental Baptist Fellowship of America; General Association of Regular Baptist Churches; New Testament Association of Independent Baptist Churches. The [three] groups included in this classification have historical roots in the Northern Baptist Convention. They refuse to fellowship with other conservative evangelicals who, in turn, may have liberal or ecumenical relations.

GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF REGULAR BAPTIST CHURCHES Headquartered in Schaumburg Illinois. They are a conservative split from the ABC-USA. Member churches are not allowed to be members of any other religious organization. They are moderately Calvinistic.

The New Testament Assoc. of Ind. Baptist Churches formed due to the concern with the GARBC tracking liberally.

SEPARATIST FUNDAMENTALIST BAPTIST (SBC roots)

The main groups here are: Baptist Bible Fellowship; Southwide Baptist Fellowship; and the World Baptist Fellowship.

Unlike Landmark Baptists, whose churches are often confined to small towns and rural areas, Independent Baptist churches are often located in urban centers. Leadership in Independent churches is centered in the pastor, [whereas in Landmark Baptists the leadership is the congregation as a whole]. Unlike Landmark Baptists, however, churches form no associations but cooperate through the participation of their pastors in state or national fellowships.

BAPTIST BIBLE FELLOWSHIP INTERNATIONAL Headquartered in Springfield, MO. Led by GB Vick. Baptist Bible College.

SOUTHWIDE BAPTIST FELLOWSHIP Led by Lee Robertson. Tenessee Temple Univ..

WORLD BAPTIST FELLOWSHIP Founded by Frank J. Norris. Headquartered in Arlington, TX.

Lecture 39

Global Independent Baptist Fellowship The GIBF is a recently formed (2000) independent Baptist fellowship arising from doctrinal disputes within the Baptist Bible Fellowship International.

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Theologically moderate, the CBF withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) over philosophical and theological differences, such as the SBC prohibition of women serving as pastors.

The Baptiscostal Movement The Bapticostal movement is a movement in some Baptist churches towards adopting certain elements of the charismatic movement.

The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists Their key issue that they were founded on is the promotion of the Homosexual movement.

Today there are over 45,000 SBC churches in America.

Dr. Jerry Falwell led the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, one of the largest independent Baptist churches in America (weekend attendance of 13,500), in taking the first steps toward aligning with the Southern Baptist Convention. They also maintained a dual affiliation with the BBFI (an independent Baptist fellowship),

Lecture 40

There is no way to know exactly how many Ind. Baptist churches exist in America, because they have no headquarters and no centralized statistics are kept. It was estimated at 10,000 in the 1970s, and the number has increased much since then. Some American cities have 50-100, or more, Ind. Baptist churches.

At the root, the term independent Baptist simply describes churches that are Baptist in doctrine and independent in polity. An Ind. Baptist church is a Baptist church that is not affiliated with denominational structures

However, there are many Baptist churches that list themselves as ‘independent’ but are still very much part of a large, powerful para-church organization.

There is a wide range of ‘independency’ with independent Baptists!]

There are ‘independent’ independent Baptists: these rarely associates itself beyond its local congregation (isolationists). There are ‘unafilliated’ Baptists: these fellowship with other churches but never will ‘officially’ become part of another ‘group’ (i.e. Fellowship, Association, para-church organization…).

There are Baptist churches that are officially a part of a para-church Fellowship or Association. There are Baptist churches that will only fellowship with churches that are officially a part of their Fellowship.

For the most part Ind. Baptists are very committed to sound Baptist doctrine; they are separatistic; they are conservative in issues of dress and music; they are committed to the King James Bible; they are aggressively evangelistic and missions oriented (meaning church planting).

Here are the ‘hottest’ issues where independent Baptists differe amongst themselves:

KJV-only; Baptist-only Baptism; Closed Communion; Women should where dresses; anti-ecumenical; anti-charismatic; anti-mission board; training of pastors in their own church; active weekly soulwinning; and sovereing grace.

Independent Baptists send out more foreign missionaries than the largest Christian group in America, the SBC.

Ind. Baptist churches operate many Bible schools, colleges, and seminaries. Most are small institutions, running from 25 to 200 students, but some are fairly large, such as Crown College, West Coast Baptist College, Golden State Baptist College, Hyles-Anderson Baptist College, and Heartland Baptist College.

Ind. Baptists typically avoid the public school system and train their children either through private church schools or home schools.

The Ind. Baptist churches doubtless make up the largest body of fundamentalist or separatist churches in the world.

Independent Baptist churches will usually be relatively small in numbers but relatively large in accomplishments. We will tend to have fairly unimpressive church’s buildings, but we will often have very impressive Mission’s giving. Be careful about judging a book by its cover…

Lecture 41

Church History ends with the Ecumenical Movement (and the AntiChrist)…

Ecumenical = worldwide, universal, global

One of the major goals of the New Age Movement is to create a Universal Religious System with all historic doctrinal distinctions removed.

The most foundational plank of Catholicism is the very doctrine it was named for - the doctrine of a universal church. The weight of her entire world system rests upon it. This is also the most foundational plank for the ecumenical movement.

While Rome claims itself to be the one true visible church, the Protestants claim the “true church” is invisible, and composed of all that know Christ as Saviour. Protestants are universalists but don’t want to be under the RCC hierarchy.

This Roman Catholic lead Ecumenical Movement is the major ‘player’ in the Great Whore, the Mother of Harlots!

In 1964, during the Vatican II Council, Pope Paul VI issued the "Decree on Ecumenism," which launched Rome's direct and open participation in the modern ecumenical movement. Yet, the Catholics aren’t flocking to the Protestants; just the opposite…the Protestants are flocking to the Catholics!

It should also be mentioned that the Ecumenical Movement is being held together by the glue of the Charismatic Movement: namely, Rock-styled CCM and Glossalia (tongues).

Ecumenism is the natural offspring from the universal church error. The whole Body needs to come together to perfect oneness (New Age like). Drop doctrinal differences for the sake of ‘oneness’, working together for the good of mankind….

Ecumenicism dies without a universal church belief. That’s why it is so strongly held and propogated.

The Ecumenical mandate is this: The Church is the body of Christ. Body of Christ is all the saved. There should be no schisms in the body. God wants His body one. We will never have God’s blessings, or will never see the return of Jesus Christ until this perfect oneness has occurred. It must be sought after at all cost. All these differences must be put aside for the sake of mankind. Anyone causing ‘schisms’ in the universal body of Christ (‘The Church’) needs to be dealt with so that unity can be maintained.

Ecumenism’s favorite Bible verses: Jn 17 (Jesus’ prayer for unity); Eph 4 (there is one body); 1 Cor (don’t have any divisions in the body); 1 Cor 12 (baptized into one body)

The Ecumenical Movement’s Gospel: Social programs to help humanity; everyone love eachother; do not judge one another; no tolerance for intolerance; get rid of all divisions; unity is the main goal.

God command churches and individual Christians to separate themselves from error. God would command us to separate from the ecumenical movement.

Lecture 42

“Ecumenism takes as it starting point that Christ founded just one Church, not many churches; hence the Roman Catholic Church has as its ultimate hope and objective - that the historically separated bodies may come again to be reunited with it.”

“The Roman Catholic Church even before the Second Vatican Council always considered it a duty of the highest rank to seek full unity with estranged communions of fellow-Christians. But they still had to stay separate from ‘false doctrine’ (as they saw it to be).

The RCC states ‘The Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.’ The antichrist can easily follow the same ideology to set himself up over the whole ecumenical church (I don’t believe that the Pope will be the antichrist, but he is preparing the way for him).

The Roman Catholic Church has, since the Second Vatican Council, reached out to Christian bodies, seeking reconciliation to the greatest degree possible.

The World Council of Churches is trying to include the RCC in its ecumenical outreach. The RCC is responding cautiously.

The RCC has begun employing the ‘charismatica’(sign gifts, etc.) in order to be more ‘mainstream’, more ecumenical. They have no problem with this maneuver in that their history is steeped with mysticism, occult phenomena, and the paranormal.

One famous Catholic Cardinal stated that "Anyone who has become a genuine Charismatic, to my knowledge, has become a better Catholic".

Catholicism’s prayer is that all her daughters (harlots, Protestantism) would come back to her via an ecumenical union.

Lecture 43

There are a lot of divisions in Protestantism; many Protestant leaders want to heal these divisions; there is a concerted effort to bring Protestantism into one ‘sheepfold’. All who resist this are labelled ‘divisive’ and ‘unloving’.

A range of opinion on certain controversial moral and social issues exists among members of each major division of traditional Christianity—but the spectrum of varying beliefs is especially broad among Protestants. These topics include abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty (sometimes referred to as “sanctity of life” issues), homosexuality (including homosexual marriage and openly “gay” clergy), and the ordination of women. Mainline (moderate) and liberal Protestants usually take a permissive stance on these issues, while evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal Protestants hold more conservative views.

The Roman Catholic Church system is wooing her departed, rebellious daughters back to big Mama! And it is all being done under the theme of Ecumenism.

The National Council of Churches welcomed John Paul II to America with these words: "We join Pope John Paul's conviction that Christian divisions are “an intolerable scandal which hinders the proclamation of the Good News in Jesus Christ."

The advent of the Protestant reformation sought not to dismantle the Catholic system, but to reform it. When men such as Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were expelled from the Roman church, they sought to revise the old system according to certain areas they deemed important from scriptures. Many things from the “mother church” remained completely intact - especially the universal church doctrine.

Protestantism is basically Catholicism with more Bible and less tradition.

The Promise Keepers men’s movement was one of the biggest ecumenical promoting movements of the last 100 years in Protestantism.

The NAE (National Association of Evangelicals) has been ‘courting’ the RCC. They are excited about their new found ‘brethren’ in the RCC !

The Bible warns us repeatedly about the end times and false teachers; the [Protestant] ecumenical movement is full of error, subtilty, seduction, compromise, deceit, and heresy. Here are just a few of the Bible’s warnings -

"Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?" ; "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners" ; "come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves" ;

The Ecumenical Movement wants all of Christendom ‘together’, united, working side by side, laying aside all their differences with the common goal of reaching the entire world for ‘Jesus’…or potentially for the ‘AntiChrist’

Lecture 44

At the turn of this century there were no Pentecostals (tongue-speaking Christians) in the world. Even 50 years ago Pentecostalism was a very minor part of Christendom, but things are different now.

The ten largest churches in the world are Charismatic. The only church which claims over 500,000 members is Charismatic--the Yoido Full Gospel Church pastored by Paul Yonggi Cho in Seoul, South Korea. The Charismatic movement is probably the fastest growing movement which names the name of Christ.

It has been estimated that 80% of Evangelicals are associated with the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement.

The Charasmatic movement is sweeping across the world and sucking into its flock Catholics, Buddhists, Mormons, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Fundamentalists, and even Spiritists. All belief systems in the world seem to be joining up with the practicing of these sign gifts, and this is their common bond to which they fellowship with each other.

Charismatics are making inroads in the Southern Baptist Convention. A recent report estimated that 500 SBC churches are charismatic.

Here are some famous SBC charismatic preachers: James Robison, Bill Sharples, Billy Graham, and Pat Robertson.

In the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement religious experience is the primary basis of its unity, while doctrinal beliefs are downplayed.

The Bible warns that in the last days “there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect”.

Lecture 45

The Baptist World Alliance is an ecumenical Baptist organization.

Many Baptist churches are advertising that they are ‘ecumenical’.

American Baptist Churches, U.S.A. is the largest blatantly ecumenical Baptist body in America.

The SBC is fellowshipping with the BWA; the BWA is fellowshipping with the NEA and the NCC; the NEA and NCC are fellowshipping with the RCC. Thus, by proxy, the SBC is fellowshipping with the NCC and the RCC! Be careful who your friends fellowship with.

Fundamentalist Baptists are typically anti-ecumenical, and therefore do not fellowship (at least closely) with any group that believes differently than they do. Thus, it is rare to find a fundamentalist Baptist church fellowshipping outside of their fundamentalist Baptist ranks.

There is a strong push within Baptistdom for Baptists to come together in unity; thus there is an ecumenical spirit within Baptisdom.

Love isn’t based upon unity; but, it is based upon keeping God’s commandments.

Lecture 46

There is an Eastern Orthodox flavored Baptist church in ‘Georgia’ (near Russia).

Baptist ‘receptive ecumenism’ means that as a Baptist church you are open to receiving traditions and practices from other church groups (like Charismatics and Catholics).

The universal ecclesiology is the main driver of the ecumenical mindset.

So, I have come to embrace the term “Ecumenical Baptist” – that is, if you let me clarify the term, just a little.

Independent Baptists are accused of being ‘petty exclusionists’ by their dividing over issues like: inerrancy of the Bible, the definition of a church, the mission of a church, and the eternal security of the believer.

Is it ok for your church to participate in ‘city-wide revivals’ with other evangelistic churches? Is it wise for the ‘clergy’ of your church to fellowship together at monthly ‘Pastor fellowships’ in your city with the other clergy? It sounds ‘positive’, but most likely will slowly but surely pull the ‘oddball’ in the group closer to the center.

Here are 3 key events that greatly promoted Baptist ecumenicity: interfaith seminaries, interfaith marriages, and religious-based wars.

The most dangerous doctrine for a Baptist to accept is this ‘universal church’, ‘one body of Christ’ heresy. It ‘requires unity among all Christians’!

Ecumenism’s heart is a one-world religion! All ‘faiths’ accepting of each other. And it doesn’t stop at ‘Christianity’… it goes to all religions!

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