The subject of this chapter does not deal basically with standards and
separation concerning personal behavior, though our hair is getting too
long on our men and seeing a fundamental lady in pants is something we
never saw until recent years, and it might be good for our people if we
pastors preached a few sermons against mixed bathing, smoking, card playing,
miniskirt wearing, seeing movies, and singing and listening to rock music!
Also, we must take care not to have a Heaven without a Hell, not to have
a resurrection without a judgment, a do without a don't and a love without
wrath; yet, the subject at hand is ecclesiastical separation.
Maybe we fundamentalists have become too enchanted with famous people.
Maybe we should let the little widow testify for a while. Maybe we HAVE
gone too far toward having famous people who are baby Christians testify
in our churches before they have become rooted and grounded in the faith.
It may be that our Shimeis are sent from God and that we need to consider
their barbs. Our critics' guns may have been loaded by our own mistakes,
and maybe that friend with a questionable disposition can help us to reestablish
a proper position. Maybe we are too careless about the crowd with which
we run. Maybe we ARE sliding back toward our own mother of harlots who
once cast us out as illegitimate children. Maybe one step to reuniting
fundamentalism would be to check carefully to see if our houses are in
order. Maybe we SHOULD check to see who our playmates are!
Maybe there ARE things not wrong to do that may not be wise to do. Maybe
we HAVE invited Sanballat and Tobiah to help us in building the wall. Maybe
we HAVE fallen asleep on the trip and need to look out the window to see
where we are. Maybe we SHOULD check the church memberships of our guest
speakers and check their check stubs to see where they invest their tithes
and offerings.
Maybe we SHOULD be extra cautious of those who are staying in to "CLEAN
IT UP."
Maybe we ought to get "cleaned out" instead of trying to "clean up."
Daniel didn't clean up Babylon. Abraham didn't clean up Egypt. Lot didn't
clean up Sodom. Balaam didn't clean up Moab. Jacob didn't clean up Haran.
Jehoshaphat didn't clean up the northern kingdom. Naomi didn't clean up
Moab. Ezekiel didn't clean up the Medes and Persians. W. B. Riley didn't
clean up the Northern Baptist Convention. R. G. Lee didn't clean up the
Southern Baptist Convention. Chuck Templeton didn't clean up the National
Council of Churches. Bob Shuler didn't clean up the Methodist denomination.
Charles Spurgeon didn't clean up the London Baptist Association. Jack Hyles
didn't clean up the Southern Baptist Convention. Maybe you can't either!
Maybe we are wanting to enjoy a certain intellectual standing. Is that
why we are so obsessed with accreditation? Is that why we seem dissatisfied
with the old King James Bible? Are we afraid of being called unscholarly?
Are we unwilling to be simple?
Maybe we were smarter when we were dumber!
We didn't have enough sense to conjugate a verb, but we had enough sense
not to let Communism take over Cuba. We were too dumb to graduate, but
we kept Communism off the campuses.
We may have been too dumb to learn theology, but we were smart enough
not to take graduate study under Niebuhr, Brunner, Kierkegaard and Barth.
We may have said, "l have did," instead of "I have done," but what we "had
did" was faithful to the Word of God! We may have said, "I have saw," instead
of "I have seen," or we may have said, "I seen" instead of "I saw," but
what we "seen" was worth seeing, and what we "had saw" was the right thing
to see!
We may have done right wrongly, but bless God, we didn't do wrong rightly!
Our disposition may have been wrong, but bless God, our position was
not wrong!
We had better come back to separation! Running with the wrong crowd
will affect all of us sooner or later. Daniel kept on praying. He went
to the lion's den. He refused the king's pizza and enchiladas. He wouldn't
drink the king's wine. He proved it pays to do right! However, later when
the Jews were allowed to return to rebuild the temple, those who wanted
to return could do so, but the list in the Bible nowhere includes Daniel!
I wonder where he was. Zerubbabel and Ezra returned, but it seems that
Daniel would have been the logical one to have headed up the expedition
to return to Jerusalem for the rebuilding of the house of God. Could it
be that Daniel should not have gone to the university of Chaldea? Was he
influenced? Maybe so!
We speak well of the courage of Esther, and we should, but was it right
for her to marry a king who was divorced, unsaved, a winebibber and lustful?
God doesn't change His principles for anybody! Suppose your daughter came
to you and told you that she wanted to marry a man who was divorced, unsaved,
a winebibber and lustful. You would be opposed to it, of course. Could
that be the reason why Esther never mentions God? The word "God" is never
mentioned in the book of Esther, but it would have been if Esther had spoken
about God to the king.
The wrong crowd will damage anybody's life. If Abraham had not been
with the wrong crowd in Egypt, there would never have been an Ishmael or
our middle eastern crisis. If Balaam had not gone to the wrong crowd in
Moab, the race would not have fallen. If Jehoshaphat had not run with the
wrong crowd in the recapturing of Ramoth in Gilead, he would never have
joined up with Ahab and Jezebel, and his son, Jehoram, would never have
met Jezebel's daughter, Athliah, and tragedy would have been averted in
the southern kingdom! If Esau had not run with the wrong crowd, he would
not have married a heathen woman, and the wicked nation of Edom never would
have begun! If Samson had not run with the wrong crowd, he would never
have lost his power in the lap of Delilah! If Solomon had not run with
the wrong crowd, he never would have lost the blessing of God because of
his strange wives! If Lot had never run with the wrong crowd, he would
never have gone to Sodom, committed incest with his daughters, and had
two heathen nations born as a result of that incest! If Peter had not run
with the wrong crowd, he would not have denied our Lord and the faith!
If the descendants of Seth had not run with the wrong crowd, there never
would have been a flood to destroy the world! If Jacob had never been with
the wrong crowd, he would have never spent 20 years outside the will of
God and married the wrong person! If Ahab had not run with the wrong crowd,
he would never have met Jezebel! If Elimelech and Naomi had not run with
the wrong crowd, they would never have gone to Moab and lost their two
sons in death, nor would have Elimelech have lost his life there!
Fundamentalists, let us be fundamentalists! We do not need liberal rouge
or National Council of Churches eye shadow or ministerial association eye
lashes or eccumenical toupes Let us be what we are old-fashioned, Hell-hating,
sin-fighting, separated, soul-winning, Christ-honoring, window-rattling,
barn-storming, God-fearing, Bible-loving, compassionate, weeping fundamentalists-
and bear the name with joy and pride!
