March 17, 2017 Show with Stephen Garrick on “Independent Fundamentalist Baptists: Their Admirable Traits & Their Weaknesses (& One of Their Pastors’ Journey into Reformed Baptist Theology & Ecclesiology)”

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 17th day of March 2017, and happy St.

Patrick's Day to all of you who in any way, shape, or form celebrate that day or give any kind of honor to Patrick of Ireland, and today

I would strongly urge you to spread the word about yesterday's interview that I had with Dr.

Michael Haken. Dr. Michael Haken, who is on the faculty at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Louisville, Kentucky, was my guest yesterday, and he did an amazing interview, two -hour interview, on the true

St. Patrick. We were examining his book, Patrick of Ireland, and I strongly urge you to go to ironsharpensironradio .com

and you will find that interview in the archive of the website for past shows, podcasts.

If you go to that section in the top right corner, click on that, you will find an mp3 that you can cut and paste the

URL and put it in an email, and you can send that to anyone you please to tell them about the true

Patrick of history. There is a lot of superstition involving Patrick, a lot of false legends and tales, and in fact, obviously the

Roman Catholic Church has claimed him as one of their saints, but Patrick was clearly not a

Roman Catholic because the Roman Catholic Church did not even exist in the 5th century, despite their claims.

There was no papacy, and there was no sacrament of the mass or sacrament of penance, and many of the things that the

Roman Catholic Church developed in later centuries to the point where it was full -blown formal

Roman Catholicism at the Council of Trent, that did not even exist in the 5th century.

But anyway, you'll find out a lot of fascinating things about Patrick of Ireland by going to that archived interview that we had yesterday with Dr.

Michael Haken. In fact, if you wanted to just put in the search engine H -A -Y -K -I -N, that will be one of the interviews that comes up because we've had

Dr. Haken on the program several times. So I urge you to look for that program on Patrick of Ireland.

But today, I'm delighted to have on the program for the very first time ever Patrick Stephen Garrick, a pastor of Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas, and today he is going to be addressing

Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, their admirable traits and their weaknesses, and we're going to be talking about his own journey into Reformed Baptist theology and ecclesiology out from Independent Fundamentalist Baptist circles.

And it's my honor and privilege not only to welcome you to Iron, Sharp, and Zion for the first time, but to welcome you right in my studio,

Pastor Stephen Garrick. Well, thank you, brother. Enjoy being here. And first of all, before we even go into the subject at hand,

I want to know more about your own personal upbringing as a child, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were surrounded by as a child, and how you came providentially by God's sovereign grace to embrace

Christ and his atoning death on Calvary. Well, my interesting set of providences, my father was raised for the most part what we would call

Missouri Baptocostal, kind of a mix between Pentecostal and Baptists in the rural areas of Missouri.

My mom was raised Benedictine Catholic. In fact, he was considered becoming a nun at one point in time.

Wow. After she got married? No, no, no, no, no. Only after she had us kids and wished she could go back in time and change.

She met my dad through a correspondence. My dad was in World War II, and they married afterwards.

My very earliest memories were of the Roman Catholic Church, but those would have been very, very faint.

Probably about the time I was four or five, my parents began to argue over religion very, very vociferously, and eventually we wound up going to a

Baptist church. It was a Southern Baptist church. The pastor there was a gospel preaching man, the

Reverend Dean Grelling in Kansas City, Missouri, and this is a downtown church in a very poor area, and it was there at about age seven and a half that I made a profession of faith.

What I appreciated about Pastor Grelling was that as a young man, since I had made that profession of faith, he took the time to talk with me one -on -one and then with my parents.

About spread over two weeks, we talked several times, and he asked me what it was

I understood and what was it about the gospel and about Christ. It wasn't just one of those walk the aisle, sign the card things.

He wanted to make sure that I understood what professing Christ was about. Baptized under his ministry, and then he left, took a church in California, and this is about the time that liberalism is making its inroads or manifesting its inroads,

I should say, in the Southern Baptist Convention, and we had a liberal gentleman come and begin to pastor the church there, and it just wasn't the same.

My parents moved shortly afterwards, and I wanted to go to church. Nobody else in the family was that excited about it, at least not my brothers and sisters, and so I began walking to a nearby church that was an independent

Baptist fundamentalist church, and I didn't know the difference. To me, Baptist was Baptist.

I was all of about 12 years old at this time, and so it was about a mile walk, and enjoyed it.

I was hearing the Bible preached and was learning the scriptures from the fundamentalist background.

Now what kind of a fundamentalist Baptist church was that? Because as you know, having been involved in the independent but fundamentalist

Baptist movement, there are different wings of that group.

You have some that would be very entrenched in easy believism like Jack Hiles, you would have others who would view that as heresy, who would strongly affirm with Reformed Christians the concept of lordship salvation or the fact that repentance is necessary for true salvation.

You have, I mean, the fundamentalist friends that I have, independent fundamentalist Baptist friends I have, predominantly from New York, you would have most of them viewing the

American poster boy for fundamentalism, Jerry Falwell, they would view him as a compromising liberal.

And you would have, even amongst those friends of mine, although some of them are

Bob Jones University graduates, you would have others that would even view Bob Jones University as a compromising institution and unworthy of the the connection with fundamentalism.

So it was a bit of a, it was the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, and there's a history behind that, but the particular church

I went to would have been one of the well -known and somewhat of a flagship church within the Baptist Bible Fellowship.

The college that I went to was the same college that Jerry Falwell graduated from, although he graduated, you know, a decade and a half before I did.

And so Jack Hiles was spoken of highly in the church that I went to, but not imitated in everything.

So this church had a large bus ministry, it had an average attendance of about 1 ,200 every

Sunday. And so it was a fundamentalist King James Version using, it was never preached

King James Version only, but certainly if you used anything else, you were looked down on for doing that.

Yeah, the folks that I am friends with in New York, they would be a mixture of rabid

King James onlyists or those who just believe it's the best translation. For instance, obviously Bob Jones University does not take a

King James only stance. In fact, they even sell the King James only controversy by my friend,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who refutes King James onlyism. They actually sell that at Bob Jones University Bookstore.

But you have others, of course, that would go to the extreme that every other translation is an imposter of the scriptures.

So you have a whole variety of views. Right. This particular church, what

I found out when I went to college, which was the Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, is that this particular church was probably one of the more open -minded of the fundamentalist churches of that group.

So that when I got to BBC in Springfield, Missouri, there were quite a few professors who actually looked at Bob Jones University with certain skepticism that they were becoming liberal.

They had seen it happen to Quentin, for example. They'd seen it happen to Biola. And now they were afraid that Bob Jones was going the same route.

And certainly they were worried about Jerry Falwell going the same route. So there was a militant wing of the

Baptist Bible Fellowship, if I can use that term, and then there was a more lenient wing of the group.

And, of course, I didn't realize that until actually I got into the college itself. And was this an

Arminian, even though I know that most independent fundamentalist Baptists would never identify themselves with the term

Arminian, but would they be a freewill -believing anti -Calvinist group?

Because I know that there are some Calvinist fundamentalists. You have to typically search high and low for them, but they do exist.

I've met pastors and spoken with pastors that would agree with my fundamentalist Baptist friends on nearly everything else except the doctrines of grace.

Yeah, the pastor of the church that I began attending I think had some, certainly had a good understanding of Calvinist theology, and I think even had a certain affinity for it.

But to him, it was not a major issue one way or the other. Now, again, after I got to the college, it was a different story.

And so generally speaking, they would have been, you know, four -point Arminian, if you want to put it that way.

They would have strongly believed that you could not lose your salvation, which later on actually posed a problem for me in an interesting sort of way.

We'll get to that. But they strongly taught that you could not lose your salvation, but as far as the other concepts of Calvinism is concerned, they would have denied all the others.

Right. And you said that this church was in a group called the

IFBC. Is that the group? No, it's the BBFI, the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. It was a split off of a group from J.

Frank Norris, if you know that, and the World Baptist Fellowship of J. Frank Norris in the South. And this group split off in 1950 and started their own college,

Missions Fellowship, and then Publications, the Baptist Bible Tribune.

Okay. Because there are some fundamentalist Baptists, independent fundamentalist

Baptists, that have an enormous capital I on that independent, and they would view any kind of fraternal of churches or association as even a violation of Baptist independence.

They would look at that as a denomination of some kind. Yeah. We used to jokingly refer to them as the independent independents.

And of course, I've heard some of them refer to the

General Association of Regular Baptists, the GARBC, which is known to be a fundamentalist group, but I've heard them identified as the

Grand Army of Rebelling Baptists. Yes. And they all go back to the same roots, the modernist fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s and the

Baptist Bible Union, and out of the BB Union of the three great men, you know,

T .T. Shields, W .B. Riley, and J. Frank Norris, while the Baptist Bible Union split up and they formed their different groups from there, and the

GARBC, and then of course in the South, the Baptist Bible Fellowship grew out of that as well. I'm going to right now actually give our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of the U .S .A.,

and if you are asking about a personal and private matter, we will allow you to remain anonymous if that is your wish.

Obviously, if you are in disagreement with your own pastor on something or a similar situation that compels you to be anonymous, we will obviously respect your wishes.

But otherwise, if you could please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, that would be very helpful.

Now the word itself, fundamentalist, didn't that come about from articles by a secular journalist who was actually writing about the fundamentalist modernist controversy?

Isn't that how that term became in vogue? Yeah, there's some debate as to how the term became in vogue, but most attribute it to, like you said, the secular newspaper journalist.

But the more common reference is to a group of essays that was edited by,

I think originally by A .C. Dixon and then later by R .A. Torrey. It was 90 essays on the fundamentals of the faith, and in fact, they just came to be called

The Fundamentals. They were originally published, or later published, in five volumes, and 250 ,000 copies of The Fundamentals, this is back in 1915, were mailed out for free to ministers and pastors all over the

United States. And The Fundamentals had articles in them by Thomas Boston, for example, on regeneration, and J.

Gresham Machen, and B .B. Warfield on inspiration of scripture. So men that you don't think of as fundamentalists in the strict sense of the word, but in the early years, it just simply meant that someone would define

Christianity by its essentials. If you did not hold to these essentials, you were not a

Christian. If you did not agree with these fundamentals, you had stepped outside the bounds of orthodoxy.

And that's the origin of the term. Yes, and it is interesting that there is a large stream of vehement anti -Calvinism within the fundamentalist movement, and yet you have some of the heroes of the fundamentalist modernist controversy on the fundamentalist side, like J.

Gresham Machen, who was a thoroughgoing Calvinist, and a Presbyterian, I might add. Yeah, and even in the

Baptist wing of the fundamentalist movement, T .T. Shields in Canada, Jarvis Street Baptist Church, Toronto, and Toronto Baptist College and Seminary, as a result of his influence,

T .T. Shields was a thoroughgoing Calvinist and a non -dispensationalist.

And on the other side, you had some Presbyterians who were Calvinists who were dispensationalists.

So the fundamentalist movement was a bit more varied in the 19 -teens and 1920s than most people realize,

I think. And before we go into some criticisms, and before we even go into why you eventually left that movement,

I'd like to, you know, have you demonstrate that there are, there were and are, some very valuable things that are to be admired about independent fundamentalist

Baptists and independent fundamentalist Christians, because obviously there are even those among them that prefer to refer to their churches as Bible churches rather than Baptists, and they even have heated disagreement over that.

Because there are churches that say that you cannot be a legitimate church, or you are in serious error, at the very least, if you don't have

Baptist in the very title of your church. But if you could tell us something about those things that you still admire, respect, and seek to retain, actually, from those days of independent fundamentalist

Baptists. Well, I'd mentioned that I was converted under the ministry of a Reverend Dean Grelling, and then when he was called to another church, the church we were attending was pastored by a young man who had just graduated seminary and had adopted a neo -Orthodox perspective.

And of course, I was far too young to understand any of that, but I could tell even then something was different.

He started asking us to use the Revised Standard Version. He's talked about the virgin birth in a different context.

He stopped using the word atonement. And even as a kid, I remember Dean Grelling, my pastor, using

Christ dying on the cross as a substitute or as an atonement for your sins. And so when

I got into the fundamentalist church, like I said, age 12, there was a strong emphasis on the

Bible is the inspired Word of God. And that rang a chord in me, because that's what I was raised with under Pastor Grelling.

I recognized that, and they helped hone that doctrine in me as a young man all through my growing up teenage years.

So there's a strong emphasis on the authority of the Word of God. Ironically, it was that authority that led me out of fundamentalism, but nonetheless, it was strongly proclaimed the

Bible is the final authority over all things. And that comes from a long fight against liberalism, and fundamentalism is to be commended for holding to the authority of the

Word of God as tenaciously as they do. And I'm grateful to it because it instilled that in me as well.

Wouldn't you say that even though many who identify themselves as independent fundamentalist

Baptists or independent fundamentalists, even though they at times distort this and take it to an extreme that could even be legitimately called sinful extreme, but there is a rightful separation that they have?

In fact, I don't know any theologically reformed ministers of today that I truly admire and recommend wholeheartedly who are not separatists in some fashion.

The modern ecumenical movement disturbs me greatly. I happen to be a former

Roman Catholic, as you were for a bit of your life. I was actually educated in a parochial school for the first eight years of elementary school in a

Roman Catholic school. I was an altar boy. My mother was a devout

Roman Catholic until she made it clear weeks before she went home to glory that she was not trusting in Roman Catholicism for her salvation, nor was she even practicing their more heretical, aberrant, idolatrous acts of worship.

She had abandoned prayer to saints and Mary and was trusting in the finished work of Christ alone by the time she went home to the

Lord. But Catholicism was a very big part of my life, and I see how

I was lied to and how my family had been lied to. Perhaps not intentionally that the priests and so on were purposefully lying to them and to me, but the cores of the faith that we were prevented from hearing in those years amongst the

Roman Catholics and attending Roman Catholic mass and so on has within me, perhaps even more than the average

Christian, a really urgent, or should

I say a sense of urgency, that we need to separate from Rome not only for our own good and for the good of our own people within the congregations where we fellowship, but for their good.

To evangelize them, to tell them to flee from that because there is no hope of salvation in that system.

And I am willing to admit that there will likely be many

Catholics in heaven when we get there, God willing, but they will be there despite their theological system and dogmas that contradict the scripture rather than because of them.

But if you could, isn't there a right view of separation that we who are in theologically

Calvinistic and Reformed circles really need to take a second look at? Because it seems that there is a lot of ecumenism drifting into our own ranks today in our day and age.

If you're going to believe something by means of biblical conviction, then of necessity that makes you distinct from those who do not believe whatever it is you hold to.

And that distinction doesn't necessarily have to be an acrimonious distinction, but it does separate you.

It does categorize you and define you. And fundamentalists were very good at that in terms of defining themselves on the inspiration authority of the word.

In Reformed circles, for the most part, we are as well. Our confessions of faith define us and separate us from those who do not hold to our confessions of faith.

And there's a great history involved with those. We don't want to be harsh.

There's a biblical ecumenism that should be practiced. For about nine years in Fort Worth, Texas, I was part of a group of—we called it the

Fellowship of Reformation and Pastoral Studies, and it was just a very informal meeting once a month.

But we had a Reformed Episcopal minister. We had an Episcopal minister who was not

Reformed—and when I say Reformed, I mean REC. Yes. Okay. And then also one who was a part of the

Episcopal Church USA, but he was Reformed in his theology. I have a friend just like that in Manhattan.

Yeah. This is St. Andrews, downtown Fort Worth at the time. And we had a very interesting group.

We had an OPC, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, PCA, Presbyterian Church of America pastor.

We had an independent, charismatic Presbyterian minister. I'm still not sure what that is.

But a beloved brother and a wonderful gentleman, and interesting history all his own.

We had another church that was just simply a non -denominational. And we got together, but what we all had in common was the gospel and the sovereign grace of God in saving the individual.

And we had some fantastic papers and presented and theological discussions how our churches could impact the communities around us.

That was biblical ecumenism, without being harsh or divisive, because we recognized the biblical things on which we could build together.

Now naturally that separated us from those who disagreed on what the gospel was and the authority of God's Word.

We had that in common. Well even though the churches that you and I are in fellowship with most predominantly, even though we would be less separatist than some of the more strident separatist fundamentalists, there are even the levels of separation that would make our distinctions even greater and our separation even farther when it comes to actual membership.

Like for instance, you and I have beloved heroes of the faith that are even alive today, like Sinclair Ferguson and other fine

Presbyterian men, outstanding Presbyterian men, and other Pato Baptists.

And although we would have great fellowship with them and even welcome them enthusiastically into our pulpits, we would not permit them membership in the church unless they had been baptized as believers by immersion, and we would not permit members of our congregations to have their infants baptized and so on.

So there is still a separation. We may have wonderful fellowship with some of our charismatic brethren, especially those who would join with us in abandoning or staying away from or condemning the

Word of Faith movement and the more extreme heretical versions of Pentecostal and charismatic theology and so on.

But even though we might have delightful and wonderful and warm fellowship with our charismatic brethren, we're not going to permit the exercise of the gifts in our congregations.

We're not even going to permit most likely, in fact most of the pastors

I know within our circles, would not even hire as a pastor someone who is a non -cessationist or somebody who even believed in the continuing gifts, the sign gifts, even if he didn't practice them.

So I mean we do still have a serious demarcation line when it comes to separation.

Yeah, and the width of that demarcation line will probably depend on the seriousness of doctrinal difference.

The church of which I'm now one of the pastors, Emanuel Reformed Baptist in Georgetown, Texas, we have cooperative ties with the local

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Our current deacon, or one of our current deacons, was a member of that OPC church for nine years because there was no

Reformed Baptist church in the area. This is before our church began. And they actually asked him to be an elder at one point in time, and he stated to them that his difference on baptism would not allow that to happen.

So when we opened up and began services, he met with his eldership and they gave their blessing for him to come to our church, where he could follow his

Baptist convictions. Conversely, when we have people who visit who are of Presbyterian persuasion because they're looking for a

Reformed church, I will do my best to talk them out of their Presbyterian persuasion.

And then failing in that effort, I will say, here's a good church that you can go to.

And so we have this camaraderie and this cooperation between us, and agree also that if one church has unfortunately had to exercise discipline over a member, the other church will cooperate in that effort, although there's nothing ecclesiastical about it.

But nonetheless, it's a cooperation between churches. That level of cooperation doesn't exist between me and some of my own

Baptist brethren in the area. So there are some very staunch

Arminian, walk the aisle, pray the prayer, you're going to heaven, Baptist churches in the area that don't even have the same view of the gospel that I have.

I have closer cooperative ties with the Orthodox Presbyterian church than I do with some of them.

On the other hand, in that desire for cooperation, there comes a point where you say, I cannot cross that line.

There are certain things we cannot recommend, certain things that we cannot give our conscientious commendation to.

We're going to be right back after these messages. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor Stephen Garrick, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Pastor Stephen Garrick and more of our examination of independent fundamentalist

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Welcome back. This is Chris Orange, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Pastor Stephen Garrick, a pastor at Emmanuel Reform Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas.

We are addressing independent fundamentalist Baptists, their admirable traits and their weaknesses, and Pastor Stephen Garrick's own journey out from among their ranks into Reform Baptist theology and ecclesiology.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, whether you agree or disagree with our guest, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. So we have been going through some very positive things about independent fundamentalist

Baptists and independent fundamentalist Christians in general, and in spite of those very positive things, there were things that you were beginning to be confronted with in God's providence that made you begin to question things that you were hearing and seeing, and you were also being drawn into truths from the scriptures that you had not been taught or preached about.

If you could give us a little bit of that background. Yeah, again, you know, the strength of the fundamentalist movement in part lie with their adamant defense of the

Bible being God's inspired word. And the final authority. They also had a very strong emphasis on preaching.

And in fact, it was my pastor there in Kansas City who challenged me when

I had made it plain that I felt called to the ministry. Challenged me the first and foremost that as a minister,

I had to learn how to communicate clearly. And that was one of the most pivotal moments in my life as a minister.

And then a strong emphasis on evangelism. But evangelism was very methodical.

It was very mechanical, or if I can even use a bit of a pejorative term, cookie cutter.

Here's the approach. Here's what you say. Here's what you ask. When they say yes here, this is what you do.

And very orchestrated approach to evangelism. So that if a person followed through these steps with someone, and they of course followed through with you and then prayed the sinner's prayer, you counted them as a brother in Christ who could never lose their salvation because they had once prayed a prayer asking

God to save them and forgive them of their sins. Probably the first chip in the bulwark of fundamentalism in my own life came when

I was a senior in high school. And I took a class called sociology. And my teacher was a rabid atheist, staunch atheist, socialist in many respects.

She also had a psychological background or psychology background and was a firm defender of Freud.

So this kind of tells you where she's at. And I'm witnessing to her one day after class, and she stops me and she says,

I know where you're going. And I did that when I was a teenager. She said, when

I was 14 years old, she said, I walked the aisle of what turned out to be a fundamentalist

Baptist church. And she was a devout Christian until her mid -20s when in studying for her master's degree in psychology, she began to lose her faith and eventually abandoned it completely and now avowed herself as an atheist.

And I didn't know what to do with that because the fundamentalist approach to evangelism was once saved, always saved.

And she knew the gospel. She knew it by heart. She knew the scriptures as well as I did.

Had been raised with them. And again, until her mid -20s, called herself a fundamentalist

Baptist Christian. And I didn't know what to say to her other than to say, well,

I assume then that you are still saved. Because to not say that to her was a denial of everything

I had been taught regarding the gospel and once saved, always saved. Yeah. That was the beginning of questions that I was not getting answers to.

Yeah. If you believe in once saved, always saved, and even though Calvinists or Reformed Christians would agree that that is a true statement, it is not a sufficient or adequate statement because we would believe, yeah, once saved, always saved, but what is salvation?

And it is not once you think you're saved, you're always saved. Exactly. Or once people around you think you're saved, you're always saved.

It's whether you're truly saved. Exactly. That's why we prefer perseverance and preservation of the saints over even eternal security because eternal security is one element of that.

But once you enter into this idea then that once saved, always saved means once truly saved, always saved.

Now you have to define what does it mean to be truly saved? How can I separate those who have walked the aisle and prayed the same prayer that I did who are genuinely converted versus those who are not?

What's the distinguishing characteristic that separates out? Because where I finally came to a year or so later, unfortunately, was that I had looked back and said, well, you know, this high school professor, this high school teacher, she must not have ever really been converted.

Although I would have said never really saved. She must not have been serious about it. She must have just done it for the sake of her parents.

But I was beginning at that point to enter into what distinguished a true convert from a false convert.

And once you open that door, there's a lot of teaching on evangelism and fundamentalism that has to be modified, if not outright jettisoned.

Yeah, and it's interesting that to reject Calvinism or Reform theology and yet believe in eternal security simultaneously is a bad combination because why is it that a person who is free in their state of deadness and sin to choose

Christ in such a way that it would save them? Why is it that they can't freely choose to leave

Christ? And you have this dilemma that many of these free will fundamentalists who believe in eternal security are in, because if someone freely comes to Christ and then lives like the devil, the very afternoon they came to Christ, for decades until they die, how could you possibly really say that they just didn't, through their free will, choose to abandon him when they believed it was no longer desirable?

And that's an American anomaly, I think. When you look back at the free will

Baptist movement, I'll call it that even though that's a bit anachronistic, is saying in England, you don't have that.

You don't have this once -saved, always -saved anomaly within the theology of the free will

Baptist, historically speaking. And personally, I think it arrives more from their dispensational perspectives of the covenants or of the agreements with Abraham and how all that plays out.

Abraham agrees, so to speak, and God's covenant with him is unconditional, can never be broken, and that's the way they kind of view salvation.

God does it, you say yes, and then at that point forward, it doesn't matter what happens, it's never going to be broken.

So they kind of take that dispensational perspective of the Abrahamic covenant, transfer it over to the new covenant salvation, and creates this strange sort of a hybrid in American dispensational fundamentalism.

So what were the things that really begin to mount up within your mind and heart that caused you to eventually say, wow,

I love you brothers, but I've got to pack my bags and go somewhere else because this is really in conflict with what

I believe the Bible teaches. What were those things that mounted up in you? Well, for me, it was a very long process.

In fact, it was not until probably six or seven years after I had graduated college that I actually came to the point where I began to realize that the fundamentalist movement didn't have a place for me.

So it was a slow process over the years. There, my senior year of high school,

I was faced with having to understand what distinguishes a true convert from a false convert. Once I began to enter into that discussion, the obvious question is, well, am

I a true convert or am I a false convert? What do

I remember about age seven and Reverend Grelling, and did I really understand the gospel?

Those would be the obvious doubts, and so as I entered into college, thoroughly dissatisfied with my own concepts and walk of holiness.

I think fundamentalism tends to define holiness primarily in external fashion, and I can say honestly that I was fulfilling all the externals.

Perhaps like the Apostle Paul, I was a fundamentalist of the fundamentalists, a Baptist of the Baptists, you know.

However many chapters a day of the Bible you're supposed to read, I've read twice as many, and I'm not exaggerating.

But still, there was this dissatisfaction in my own life, and it was as I began to study the concepts of conversion, repentance, and sanctification that I stumbled across two books that were very pivotal.

One was by Walt Chantry, Today's Gospel, Authentic or Synthetic. I found that in the library of Baptist Bible College.

It wasn't supposed to be there, because seriously, they had had a split of Armenians and Calvinists some 10, 15 years before that, and most of the

Calvinist books had been purged out of the library since then. So on the library shelf under the card catalog of the

Heading of Repentance was Walt Chantry's book. And by the way, for our listeners who aren't aware of this, Walt Chantry was one of the early pastors of the congregation that I am a member of right now, and Pastor Chantry, I believe, retired about 15, 16 years ago, but he was there for 40 years as the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle.

I believe he was either the second or third pastor after the founding of it by Ernie Reisinger.

Yes. Now this was a copy, if you've ever come across that book.

Some of the older copies had kind of a silhouette of Tom Nettles, yes, and for years

I thought that's what Walt Chantry looked like. I thought it was Walt Chantry on the cover.

But right next to that book was an older book. It was John Cahoon, Scottish Puritan, and just because it's pronounced

Cahoon, it's not spelled that way. It's C -O -L -Q -U -H -O -U -N.

And again, for years I've pronounced it as Carl Cahoon, and it's actually Cahoon. And John Cahoon has a book called

True and False Repentance is the name of the book, and I think you can find it as an essay online free in PDF format, and I highly recommend people read that.

That one took me several weeks to wade through because I was not used to reading

Puritan writing, and John Cahoon was not from the

Puritan era, but he was highly influenced by Thomas Boston, and so he writes from that perspective and with that verbiage, and it took me a long time to wade through John Cahoon.

But I noticed that both of those books were published by Banner of Truth Trust, and I had no idea what

Banner of Truth was. It sounded fundamentalist to me at the time. And we're about five or six blocks away from the

American headquarters, right? Yes, yes. But I mean, you know, you can understand because, you know, fundamentalists talk about waving the banner, you know, of truth, and I thought, well, here are some fundamentalists that have got a different perspective on things.

Little did I know. In fact, we're going to pick up—because I don't want to interrupt you mid -sentence—we're going to pick up on your reading of Pastor Calhoun's book, or Cahoon's book, right when we return from this break.

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson, at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And Joe in Slovenia, we will be getting to your question as soon as Pastor Garrick finishes his thought when we return from the break, so please be patient with us and we'll get to you and your question as soon as possible.

We'll be right back, God willing, right after these messages, so don't go away. There's more to come with Stephen Garrick and our study of independent fundamentalist

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This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

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Iron Sharpens Iron remain on the air and his interest in donating to us. And we are back now with Pastor Stephen Garrick and we are discussing

Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, why he at some point in his

Christian journey left that movement, but also desiring to retain things that he believed to be biblical and admirable.

And right before the break you were discussing a book you discovered by Pastor Cahoon on true and repentance

I believe that was the theme anyway, what was the actual title of the book? Well if I remember correctly

John Cahoon, John C. Cahoon, and it was true and false repentance

I think was the name of the book. Now whether that was the name, the original name of the book as he published it

I don't know for sure. And so this started to bring questions to your mind about whether or not what you were hearing, believing, and teaching was actually biblically accurate.

Yeah, John Cahoon in his book presents the idea that repentance is the fruit of being born again.

So that a true convert, remember I had wrestled with what's a true convert, what's a false convert, how do

I know the difference? And the reason this book fit in the gap for me, helped me out, was that it showed that the characteristic of a true convert was one who manifested the fruits of repentance in his life.

And suddenly it was like, well of course that makes perfect sense.

But that had never been taught before within fundamentalist circles, at least not to me.

Right. And I think the reason being is that because their concept of once saved, always saved, and their concept of how a person got saved was this methodological viewpoint.

Do you confess that you're a sinner? Do you believe Christ died on the cross to save you from your sins? Will you now ask

God to forgive you of your sins and to save you and take you to heaven when you die? Did you do that?

Well then you're going to heaven. Never doubt that. And no one else should ever doubt that.

But now was entering into this concept, or in my thinking, no there is room to doubt that because if you don't manifest the fruits of repentance then what you did before was not a true conversion.

And that, as simple as it sounds, was a huge watershed moment for me. And obviously we do have to give the caveat, although it was not in your experience with fundamentalism to hear something like that, there are fundamentalist

Baptists out there who do strongly believe in the necessity of repentance. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was just not in my experience.

Right. And the folks from the Jack Hiles wing of fundamentalism would have been adamantly opposed to that, thinking that is work salvation or something.

Yeah. There were two quotes from Jack Hiles that bothered me deeply. And I say quotes, but I'm not going to be able to quote them word for word.

But one, he preached in our chapel and said, give me 15 minutes alone with a man and I will lead him to Christ.

And so through that was this, again, this mechanical concept of evangelism.

The other was, I've heard a sermon in which he said, a man can be a drunkard and an adulterer and a thief.

Come to Christ and get saved and still be an adulterer and a drunkard and a thief.

But he'll go to heaven when he's dead. Wow. Now obviously, to clarify that, you believe that Christians can commit sins such as those, but they will not be perpetually and unrepentantly enslaved to them.

And that was the difference that Cajun was getting across, was this fruit of repentance.

And he doesn't portray repentance as a finished work. It's an ongoing struggle in the heart of the

Christian. It's a war. It's a battle at which the Christian is constantly pursuing.

But that was still different from what I had been taught, because before you could be a

Christian and there be no war, you could be anything and still be a Christian because you had prayed the prayer.

And for my brand of fundamentalism or from what I had been taught, this idea that Cajun was getting across made perfect sense.

It fit with the scriptures. It helped me solve the issue of my high school teacher, for example, and some others

I had run into. But it changed everything that I understood about evangelism from that point forward.

Let me go to one of our listener questions. It's a very long statement followed by a question, and that is from Joe in Slovenia.

He says, Dear Brother Chris, thanks for addressing the hard topics that we need in our day. I've always wondered why fundamental, in quotes, is considered by many to be a pejorative term.

It has been thrown at me with that intent. It seems to me that all the doctrinally orthodox

Christians of history could be labeled as fundamentalists. All the orthodox creeds and confessions of church history are attempts to outline the fundamentals of the faith once delivered to the saints in light of the contemporary threatening heresies the faithful were being harassed by.

Those who drafted them and those who affirmed them are affirming their contemporary fundamentals.

All the 66 books of our scriptures are foremost themselves polemics on what the true faith is and right standing with God and what is not.

I could go on, but this is getting long. My question is, shouldn't we all seek to be fundamentalists in the best and historic sense of the word?

And then he says, Hold the line! Now that resonates with me,

Pastor Steve, because when people have asked me, Are you a fundamentalist?

I will typically answer in two ways. One, I will say, Well, what do you mean by that? Or I will say,

Yes, but let me explain. Because I have a hard time identifying myself as something outside of a fundamentalist when you consider what the term historically meant in light of the fundamentalist modernist controversy.

I don't consider myself a modernist or a liberal, but at the same time, that term has morphed into something more than what it once was.

Absolutely. Again, if you go back to the publishing of The Fundamentals by R.

A. Torrey, the meaning of the term fundamental was an article of faith which you had to believe in order to be considered orthodox.

Not necessarily an article of faith that you had to believe in order for me to include you in my circle, but at least you could say,

If you believed this, you could be considered orthodox, and if you don't believe it, you cannot be considered orthodox.

In that sense of the word, the Nicene Creed is a fundamental of the faith, because it talks about the deity of Christ, or the

Chalcedonian Creed and the two natures of Christ is a fundamental of the faith. And so in that sense, we not only seek to be fundamentalists, we have to be fundamentalists or we're not orthodox.

We're outside the Church and we're outside the Gospel if we're not fundamentalists in that sense of the word.

I even know some pastors that would be identical in their ideology that they once held when proudly waving a banner, fundamentalist, who today don't use that term because of the fact that it's often mistaken for some other elements of fundamentalism that they disagree with.

And also with the prevalence of that term being attached to Islam in our modern day, they don't want to have unnecessarily the baggage of having that negative concept being attached to them, being some kind of bloodthirsty, hateful, bigoted people or something.

But what were some of the other things that after that repentance issue, which is a major one, what were some of the other things that led up to this final straw that broke the camel's back with you?

Well afterwards, remember both of the books I had found were published by Banner of Truth Trust, and in God's providence

I was a dormitory supervisor. We used to call ourselves floor moms, but our job was not so much to be motherly as it was to be more supervisory.

The college I went to, a floor mom was responsible for making sure that the students in the dormitories obeyed all of the rules.

Even a guy was called a floor mom? Yeah, and so if you were beloved, they called you mommy.

And those first year freshmen would come in, and I had a whole floor of them, with the exception of one guy.

And my job was to hand out demerits if you violated the rules. So if you came in after curfew, it was 10 demerits, but if your hair was too long, it was 20.

And you got 100 demerits in a semester, you were kicked out of the school for that semester.

So there I am in my role as a floor mom, and one of the jobs is to go through the rooms and make sure that they have cleaned their room every day.

And I'm going into one of the rooms, and there is a book published by Banner of Truth Trust on Calvinism.

It's not mine, it's one of the students. And I go, Banner of Truth, I know that. Calvinism? And I was a little bit concerned.

The student, and I will publish his name, was Tom Montgomery.

Tom Montgomery had done three years at Baptist Bible College and gotten a certificate, a graduate certificate, gone out to work in churches, and somewhere in this process had become a

Calvinist and began reading Banner of Truth, decided he wanted to get his master's degree.

And the quickest way to do that was to come back to BBC, get his fourth year in so he could get his bachelor's, so he could go on and get his master's.

So he came in and he was going to be quiet. He wasn't going to tell anybody he was a Calvinist because that would have got him kicked out automatically.

And I happened to discover this book on Calvinism published by Banner of Truth. To be honest with you, I don't remember what the book was.

But I talked to him about it earlier, or later on, and he was afraid that I was going to report him because that would have gotten him kicked out of school.

And instead, I asked him about Banner of Truth. And he told me about it, and then he just couldn't contain himself, and he opened up Romans chapter 9.

And we argued over Romans chapter 9 for the next four months. And I think he appreciated the fact that I didn't report him as a heretic and have him kicked out.

But we discussed the scriptures for the next four months and argued over them from every theological perspective you could imagine.

And it was, you know, what if God, willing to show his long -suffering towards the vessels of wrath, you know, prepared for destruction?

And what if God shows mercy? And it was those words, what if, that finally drew my attention to the doctrine of election.

And by the end of that year, I was engaged to be married to a pastor's daughter, and I was a three -point

Calvinist. If there is such a thing, then I was it.

But it all fit, because understand, you know,

Cajun's doctrine of repentance hinges on the concept of regeneration, and the fruits of regeneration are the pursuit of the fruits of repentance.

And now I've come to understand what regeneration is as a divine work of the

Spirit of God. Interestingly enough, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, in its Statement of Faith, under regeneration, refers to it as a work of the

Holy Spirit that secures our belief in repentance. And I don't think that's the exact verbiage, but it gets the point across.

That even then, there was this vestige of the understanding that regeneration produced faith and repentance.

And that was the next big step, and from there on out, it was a slide downward.

It's interesting that one of the things that the independent fundamentalist

Baptists claim they champion is the inerrancy of Scripture, and that they take the

Bible literally. And yet, to disagree with the doctrines of grace, you have to take some verses literally out of context, and then you take the verses that clearly teach that God has an elect people that he unconditionally chose before the foundation of the world.

You have to take all of those passages that would attest to that, and you would have to really figuratize them, or allegorize them, or sweep them under the rug.

I mean, it was funny, I have a friend who will remain nameless, who was, until just a couple of years ago, an independent fundamentalist, freewill -thinking,

King James -only Baptist. And when he was getting guidance, when he informed one of his close friends that he was going to be preaching on Romans 9, his close friend, who was still in the fundamentalist, freewill wing of Baptists, he eagerly said, you've got to look at my sermon notes on Romans 9, because it's very important that you do this.

When you're teaching or preaching on Romans 9, you've got to rip it off like a

Band -Aid. You've got to do it real quick, because if you read slowly through the chapter, and if you park on certain verses, people are going to get the wrong idea.

They're going to jump to the wrong conclusions. And I was utterly astonished that a man who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture was afraid of that Scripture.

And when you think about some of the texts in Scripture, that unless you are theologically reformed, you can't really believe them as they are written.

You cannot believe them as the author intended them to be believed. And that's the distinction. Remember, the fundamentalist movement is staunch defender of the inspiration of God's Word.

And again, to be commended for that position, because they have held it against modernism and liberalism for decades now.

But when we spent, Tom Montgomery and I, spent four months going through Romans chapter 9, it was the first time in my life that I understood that what

Paul was doing in this passage, in this chapter, was making a long -extended contextual argument.

Because the Scriptures had always been preached textually before that. Individual verses, or in many cases individual words, became the basis of the entire sermon.

So when I realized that Romans 9 was actually an extended contextual argument, it dawned on me, you know, the rest of Paul's epistles are this way also.

And so now you had to start taking words and verses in their context. And again,

I know that sounds simple, but for me, from my experience, that was another watershed moment.

I actually had come to belief in election before I began to understand how to take the

Scriptures to interpret Scriptures in their context as the entire canon, and as individual works within themselves of the book.

That was new. That was different for me. Don't you think that unless your understanding of Romans 9 will automatically evoke the response that Paul predicts it will, if it's being understood appropriately or accurately, where he says in verse 19, you will say to me then, why does he,

God, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? Or who resists his will?

On the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this?

Will it? Or does the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and the other for common use?

If your understanding of Romans 9 does not evoke that protest from the heart of natural man, then you don't understand it correctly.

Right. Now, the explanation given to me was that Romans 9 was actually about Israel as a nation, and you've probably heard that explanation before.

It dawned on me somewhere in this four -month debate with Tom Montgomery, as Tom and I are discussing this and I'm giving him this argument, this is about Israel, this is

Old Testament Israel being selected out from among the nations. One day it dawned on me that these other nations that weren't being selected didn't have the

Word of God, they were not given the gospel in pre -incarnation times, you know what

I mean. And so this election of God to choose Israel and not to choose the other nations resulted in the other nations being condemned by God's choice.

And so it didn't matter how you interpreted Romans 9, even if you took it as a national perspective, you're still saying

God chose some people and he didn't choose others, and those whom he did not choose did not get the gospel as a result of God's sovereign choice.

There was no way around it. Well, from there on, the next issue is the creation itself.

If you just believe in foreknowledge, did God know when he created the world exactly who would get saved and who didn't, and did he still make the decision to create the world?

Even if it's just foreknowledge, you still have God making a decision that results in exactly who's going to heaven and who's not, and it's still

God's sovereign choice to make. Yeah, even if it's just foreknowledge the way that the non -Calvinist sees it, which is seeing into the future.

Right, exactly. So you don't solve the problem by running to foreknowledge, which is the reason we have the trouble with open theism today, that's another radio program.

But once I understood that, and the pieces started falling into place, and I understood, ah,

I've got to treat my scriptures differently, I have to take them in context, I have to do theological analogies of scripture to scripture, and the analogy of scripture,

I've got to interpret it as a whole, but then I also have to understand it from the perspective of God's sovereign choice.

Changes everything. In fact, we are going to our final break right now, and I'm going to read one more question for you.

We have Eric in Suffolk County, Long Island, saying, one of the things that disturbs me about many

Reformed churches is that they are more prone, it seems, to adopt worldly music, like rap music and other forms of music, that I believe are offensive to God, if your guest could explain that.

Well, you could answer that after we come back from the break. Absolutely. And because I have been confronted by friends who are

Independent Fundamentals Baptists as well, who are actually not even acknowledging the fact that there are even those serious debates and discussions within Reformed Christians, among Reformed Christians, and among Reformed Baptist Christians and so on, so we shouldn't, they shouldn't view us in a cookie -cutter fashion, and neither should we reciprocate in viewing them as a cookie -cutter group of people.

But we're going to our final break, which is a much shorter break, and if you'd like to join us on the air while you still can, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. One sure way all

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This is Chris Zarnes, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come is

Stephen Garrick, pastor of Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas. We are addressing independent fundamentalist

Baptists, their admirable traits and their weaknesses, and we're talking about Pastor Garrick's journey from independent fundamentalist

Baptist circles into Reformed Baptist theology and ecclesiology. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Before the break, Eric in Suffolk County, Long Island was asking why is it that he, as far as he is concerned, he sees that Reformed churches are more prone to accept what he would deem to be worldly forms of music that he believes are offensive to God, and he included rap music in there.

And before the break, I also said that those kinds of discussions and debates and even arguments very much exist within Reformed circles, and there are even

Reformed churches that don't permit musical instruments in the worship service. You can't make a cookie cutter out of all

Calvinists, and you cannot also blend in together things that some

Christians believe as acceptable forms of entertainment outside of worship and those things that would be included in a worship service.

I don't think Reformed churches are more prone to adopting, shall we say, contemporary music in worship.

I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, as I was explaining during the break with you, the college from which

I graduated now has a praise and worship band with very contemporary

Christian music, electric guitars, drums, the stage lights, the whole nine yards, as part of their chapel service and as a group that tours among the churches.

Whether that's acceptable or not, the point is they're not

Reformed, they're not Calvinists. And they would also probably be rejected as not being fundamentalist by our fundamentalist friends.

Well, because fundamentalism itself has gone through a change of definition in the last 10 years especially, but certainly in the last two decades.

And so there's been a distinction, a rift, if you will, a separation that has occurred within fundamentalism itself.

And so fundamentalism can now be more along the lines of we hold to the fundamentals of the faith, albeit within a more freewill

Arminian gospel context, but we are going to be much less fundamentalist, if I can put it that way, on things like dress and music, which version of the

Bible we use, and so forth. So fundamentalism has gone through a split. Now, there is still a more of what is traditionally or denominated by the term fundamentalism, there are still fundamentalist groups of that sort.

I don't think one way or another is more prone to that. To me, the issue of that comes down to one's understanding of regulative principle of worship and the role of the law of God in determining ethics and decisions in your life.

And so even among some who will say they are Reformed, how they understand those issues probably have a bit more influence in the kind of music they're going to use, rather than whether you're

Reformed or not Reformed, or fundamentalist or not fundamentalist. Right, and I was saying to you before, or during the break, off air, that personally,

I would be very upset if during a worship service somebody was rapping from the pulpit.

But I have heard Christian rappers who do not buy into the imagery of what is commonly associated with a hip -hop or rap artist that conveys the imagery of arrogance, greed, pride, misogyny, viewing women as sex objects, bragging about oneself, all those things, the thick old chains and the posturing when

God even said, one of the things that God hates is a haughty look. That's a haughty look on steroids.

And that I hate. But there are some people that are known as Christian rappers who, even though I would not want them doing it from a pulpit or a church podium,

I cannot see how a Christian could logically condemn everything about it if they are not doing anything that's sinful and what they are singing is accurate.

Because when it's boiled down to its essence, it's just rhyming. It's poetry, really. It's rhythmic recitation.

Right. And there's a talent and a skill to it, I suppose. I'm not a fan of rap in any sense of the word.

But again, in terms of worship, the issue is, what does

God's Word and God's law and the principles have to say about how worship is to be conducted? I mean, there are

Reformed Baptist churches that do not permit choirs because it's not in the

New Testament. It's an Old Testament concept that was not to be carried through to the modern day.

And they also would consider it vain worship, entertainment, that the worship, the singing of praise to God is to be a congregational event.

It's not to be a spectator activity. It's to be participated in. And if the point on music is, is it entertainment or is it worship?

Keep in mind that even in some of the more traditional fundamentalist churches, entertainment is still a key aspect to the music and the type of music that's used.

It needs to be peppy. It needs to be cheerful. There's going to be a solo song that's going to be entertaining.

You're talking about in the fundamentalist circles. In the fundamentalist circles. Yes, yes, you're right. You don't have a children's group get up and perform when they might not even be considered saved at all.

You have these children. Yeah. So the idea being that whatever we see happening in our modern era, keep in mind that to some degree it can be seen as an extenuation or a corollary, maybe extrapolation would be the better word for it, of what the fundamentalists were doing all along in the 1960s and 1970s with the quartets that came in and would sing.

The whole church service would be the quartet singing and people would applaud and clap and there would be amens and an emotionally driven entertainment concept of music for that particular

Sunday. So what was it, the final thing that cut the umbilical cord to fundamentalism, what was the thing that finally made you cut the apron strings, what made you say, wait a minute,

I've got to go, this is it, and have you gravitate into Reformed Baptist circles and eventually become a pastor of a

Reformed Baptist church. Yeah. When I was a, now remember what I said when I graduated college, I called myself a three -point dispensational

Calvinist. And after my first pastorate, I would have called myself a four -point dispensational

Calvinist. And that was five years later. So within five years, I have moved to the point where I've now adopted the

I, irresistible grace. And so it's a very slow moving process, in part because I believed at the time to give up dispensationalism of necessity meant

I had become Presbyterian. And I was convicted from the New Testament, and I studied it over the course of a year and a half.

The New Testament simply taught that infant baptism was not scriptural, that believer baptism was the proper perspective.

So I didn't want to give up my dispensationalism because I felt that that would make me Presbyterian, and that was unbiblical.

And so I'm trying to figure out where in the middle I fit. What finally did it for me was the fact that I realized that the key of fundamentalism was the fact that rules were defined by other men.

A lot of what I held to in terms of ethics, of what I would never do, lines that I had drawn for personal convictions, it dawned on me these were based more on what

I had been told than what I had actually become convinced of by the authority of the

Scriptures. And that led to studying the concepts of Christian liberty, and the way that came about, interestingly enough, was not from Christian liberty, but so much from the law.

Because once you understand that God's law is the final authority, then anything not in God's law is man's opinion, and I'm free to take it accordingly, wisdom or not.

I still have to filter it through the ethics of God's law and the principle of God's Word.

And that led to a great liberating moment for me. It's interesting, that brings up two things immediately in my mind.

Number one is that many independent fundamentalist Baptists are very big on exposing things that they believe are the traditions of men and not things taught in the

Word of God, and yet they simultaneously are blind to the fact that they have raised traditions of men up to the level of God -bereathed

Scripture and not even realize it. At least you would hope that they didn't realize it. Yeah, and that's in large part out of the reverence and respect that they showed to men who were their mentors in the faith.

And there's nothing wrong with showing that kind of respect to these men. But when one of them would declare, it's wrong to do this, and here's my reasons for it, it was not unusual.

In fact, it was the accepted norm that, okay, I'm going to follow this pastor because he's big in the fellowship, and I give my respect to him, so I'm going to follow his standards.

There was a saying in chapel, if you don't have any of your own convictions, borrow somebody else's until you get your own.

That was the fundamentalist perspective on how you should determine ethical behavior.

If you don't know what's right and wrong, listen to these older guys and just do what they tell you to do until you figure it out on your own.

And that, of course, is an unbiblical perspective on behavior ethics. B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, wants to know, although I disagree with the fundamentalist stance against any use of alcohol,

I think that very often Reformed Christians tend to flaunt that liberty. Do you concur?

The particular Reformed men that I know, I would not say flaunt it at all.

There are certainly some who are going to participate in that from their view of liberty more than others.

And then I know some Reformed men who have a much more cautious approach to the use of alcohol as well.

So again, I don't think that's a tendency one way or another within Reformed circles, but certainly there are guys that I know that are going to enjoy that use of Christian liberty more than others.

And what I would say is, if that bothers you, ask yourself why.

Why does that bother me? If it's not unscriptural, then on what basis does this bother me?

Is this a vestige of holding onto a tradition that I now know is not supported by Scripture?

Or am I actually seeing somebody who's being careless with their use of liberty? Sort that out and ask yourself why it's bothersome to you.

There are warnings in Scripture about alcohol, obviously, and we would mutually agree that drunkenness is damnable.

That is one of the marks of somebody going to hell, if they are an unrepentant, habitual drunkard.

At the same time, there are warnings that, if taken out of context, you might think that they are teaching total prohibition.

But like, is it, wine is a mocker and strong drink a brawler? Is that the phrase from the

Old Testament? It's from the Book of Proverbs. Right, right, right. Things like that. But if an inerrantist, literalist

Christian who views the Scripture that way is going to be honest with the text, there is nothing that would prohibit any use of alcoholic beverages completely.

And I think so, I agree. In fact, wine in some of the prophetic

Old Testament books is a sign of God's blessing to the people. Of course, they would say that's just grape juice. Well, I don't think that can be defended from the

Scriptures. But the point is that, if you ask yourself, why is it bothersome to me?

Not only is drunkenness a problem, if a person uses alcohol, and they're not getting drunk, but they're using it in place of reliance upon God to get them through their problems, that equally is a sinful issue.

And it's a principle that has to be sorted through by the person. And B .B., who asked the question in Cumberland County, she may be reacting to things that she has seen and heard that I have seen and heard.

Perhaps I'm more sensitive because I had a drinking problem, a very serious one, that if I had not quit alcohol, and I am one of those people that, although other

Christians may have a liberty to moderately partake of that item,

I cannot. I just know that this would be putting God to the test for me because of the fact that I abused it to such a scandalously wicked level, deadly level.

But I have seen, I don't know if this is what B .B. is referring to, but I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, not only on the internet and things like that, but even amongst

Christians that I have had fellowship with. And I hate to put a dig in the side of my

Presbyterian brothers, but they're typically, for some reason, these folks are more typically from a

Pato Baptist persuasion, but who have flaunted liberty, who have crossed the line of entering into the initial stages of drunkenness because they are just so lackadaisical with that drink that they cherish as a liberty.

And there are Christians who are Reformed who wear that with such a badge of honor that it seems to be an essential element of being

Reformed that is on the same par with the doctrines of sovereign grace, which is absolutely absurd.

In light of our topic of fundamentalism, fundamentalism is in many respects easy.

A good friend of mine, a pastor friend, his wife will often say, this was so much easier when we were fundamentalists.

And the reason for that is because the lines are clearly drawn for you.

The problem is that you don't get away from the principle. So if you begin to say as a fundamentalist, no alcohol, period.

Okay, why? Well, alcohol in itself is sinful. Can I take

NyQuil when I'm sick? I go to the doctor and they want to swab me with alcohol.

How far do I take this? And one of my professors in college wrestled with this openly, came to the conclusion he would never take

NyQuil or gargle with Listerine. And I know pastors who have eaten in fancy restaurants with them, and they will say, is this chicken cooked in wine?

Because if it is, I'm not having it. Exactly. Even though all the alcohol is probably burned off. You're definitely not going to get drunk, not even close, remotely close.

Yeah. So fundamentalism in that respect is easy. Someone else comes along and says, the

Bible says don't get drunk. Don't rely upon alcohol as your God to solve your problems.

And instead, fundamentalism says, let's help God out. Let's draw a line further away from the biblical standard.

Let's put up the fence that will make sure you don't even get close to it. At Baptist Bible College, when

I was there, there was a product that came out called Near Beer. Had no alcohol in it whatsoever, but it tasted like beer.

You would get kicked out of school if you were found drinking that, even though it had no alcohol in it, because it was the thought that you were getting near the fence that had been set up.

Right. And of course, this even goes along with other things in life. For instance, you and I would agree,

I'm sure, as would most Reformed Baptists, that it is sinful to dress provocatively, that women shouldn't be walking around with miniskirts on and with the sexually provocative clothing.

And of course, men could be guilty of that too, if they want to show off their body after the gym and wear all kinds of sleeveless shirts even in church.

Now, one thing, if a guy's working in the backyard or mowing his lawn, but obviously in a church service, you don't want to be dressed provocatively sexually.

But at the same time, the fundamentalists have gone so far to require that women never wear slacks when there are slacks or pants that are designed for women that do not look like men's clothing and so on.

They go to the extreme where it's refreshing to go to a church, a fundamentalist church, where you don't see women in miniskirts or short shorts that look like they're actually on the beach or something.

But sometimes you see you're surrounded by people that are right off the set of Little House on the

Prairie, which is also a little bit unnerving. But is that one of the things that repelled you away from the fundamentalist movement, is that they became in some senses

Pharisaic because they were adding to God's Word with their own rules? That was probably one of the last issues for me.

I was never one to look at the rules as something to rebel against.

Remember, I'm the good Pharisee, I'm the good fundamentalist. It wasn't until much later that that was a final issue for me.

But what I did notice was this idea that many of the rules were defined by the ministers, defined by the men who ran the organization, the fellowship, the school.

And they were simplistic. So you talked about provocative dress.

Well, we're going to avoid that, the fundamentalists would say. And here's how we're going to avoid that.

Dresses must be so many inches below the knee, and they have to be so much looseness involved, and the woman cannot wear jeans or pants of any kind.

So there were rules that were drawn up so as to define what it meant for a woman to dress modestly.

The problem with that was twofold. One, you're now following man's rules, and there's no liberty in that.

The second was that if a young lady wanted to attract attention to herself using her body, at the college

I went to, trust me, there was a way she was going to find out how to do it, even within the rules that were there.

There were always loopholes, there were always things that had not been addressed, and so there was always some fashion that she could find if that's what she wanted to do.

She could do it. But that approach was the same for everything else.

If you wanted to violate the rules, there was a way you could do it without violating the rules per se, and still get away with it, because you cannot write that many rules to cover every exigency and close every loophole.

And when you're focused on those things, especially if you're a pastor, you are robbing the congregation of the meat of the

Word, of really digging through the treasure trove of Scripture to bring deep theology to the surface and so on.

Because I have been to many different services by fundamentalist Baptists where they're preaching to the choir, and they're just talking about these very things, and really in essence bragging about themselves like the

Pharisee in the temple in contrast to the tax collector. Well what it does is it robs the individual

Christian of the fruit of the struggle. The Christian is supposed to come to the

Word of God, have the Word of God explained to them, and then they are to struggle in prayer and in thought and meditation, how do

I put this into practice into my life? Fundamentalism removes that struggle because you're told how to put it into practice.

Here are the rules. Again, at least the fundamentalist tradition from which

I came, and I've got to be very careful to say that. So with that caveat in mind, it removes the struggle.

When you get back to the struggle, don't be surprised if different people come to different convictions or different stages about how much alcohol, what type of alcohol, how long should the dress be, or how long should the hair be.

Can I wear a beard? And by the way for the audience, yes, I do have a beard. And that rule is a definitely no for the women listening though.

And well, yeah, I suppose so. But again, you know, at the school

I went to, you know, facial hair was against the rules for the most part. Which is definitely a

Pharisaic rule. It's funny when I hear of people who went to Bob Jones University that had the same rule, and they would go to the president's office, and there's a picture of Spurgeon on the wall of the big beard, you know.

And you can't wear wire rim glasses because hippies wear those, you know, really strange things.

But I want to make sure before we run out of time that people know a little bit about Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church, which is where you are on the pastoral team there of the

Board of Elders. Emanuelreformedbaptistchurch .com is the website. Emanuel with an

E and two M's. Emanuelreformedbaptistchurch .com with an

E in the beginning and two M's right after the E, because not all people spell that the same.

It's a Hebrew word that can be spelled differently. But if you could tell us or listen to something about Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas.

Georgetown, Texas. I am pleased to be one of the pastors there with Pastor Bob Curley and Matt Vincent, who is a recent graduate of Westminster Seminary in California and the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies, IRBS, with Dr. Jim Renahan. And so the three of us are the pastors.

The church was started. We began as a Bible study, or excuse me, a Sunday worship in 2012.

And we constituted in 2013. We met for over two and a half years in the local library there.

Georgetown Public Library was very gracious to let us rent rooms on Sunday mornings. And for just about the last year, we have been in our own building.

God has blessed us. We've got some tremendous people there. And I tell the people who have come, keep in mind that what we're doing is a lot like what

Daniel Boone did. We're clearing out stumps. We're preparing the way for the next generation.

And it's our young people growing up that we've planted the church for, not necessarily for ourselves.

Amen. Well, again, that's EmanuelReformedBaptistChurch .com with an E and two

M's. I want you to close the program with just about two minutes of what you most want to have etched in the hearts and minds of our fundamentalist

Baptist listeners. And one thing that immediately comes to mind before you go to that is that they have to be careful not to, as we have already said, elevate traditions of men to the

God -breathed truths of Scripture. One thing that immediately comes to mind is they will separate with you and condemn you very often if you are not pre -tribulational in your eschatology.

And no one on the planet Earth was a pre -tribulationalist until the mid -19th century.

So that would be eliminating a great portion of the body of Christ for most of the existence of the

Church. Keep in mind that one of the founders of fundamentalism, again, in Canada, T .T.

Shields, was not dispensationalist. But what I would say to them first and foremost is, if you're a fundamentalist listening, thank you.

The fundamentalist movement taught me much for which I've got to be appreciative. God brought me through that so that I could understand and regain an appreciation for the authority of God's Word.

But it's that authority that undermines the concept of man -made traditions.

It's that authority that makes you struggle with Christian liberty, putting the principles of God's Word into action.

It's that principle of the authority of God's Word that I was taught as fundamentalist that I began to see perhaps taught something different than what

I personally was taught in fundamentalism. And of course, maybe a final word about the doctrines of sovereign grace, which it seems in the 21st century the majority of fundamentalists reject, if you could at least give an appeal especially to that right now.

For me, the doctrines of God's sovereignty helped me to understand the distinction in the gospel.

It changed the way I understood the gospel itself. Now for me, that meant being at odds with the fundamentalist background that I had.

Not all fundamentalists would have been the free will, Arminian, you know, walk the aisle, pray the prayer, you're going to heaven no matter what kind of fundamentalist.

Not all of them would have had that kind of a perspective. But for me, the doctrine of God's sovereignty contradicted that so clearly that it led me to a point where I had to say, the fundamentalist tradition with which

I've been raised disagrees with the Word of God. But more than that, it brought an assurance of salvation, a true assurance that you cannot get if your assurance is based solely on,

I walked the aisle, prayed the prayer on this date. We're out of time. I'd love for our fundamentalist brethren to go to Romans 3 and read from verses 9 through 18 and see who, if they are going to be honest with themselves, who is reading that literally and believing in that and interpreting that literally, the non -Calvinist or the

Calvinist, because I think only the Calvinists really do embrace those words literally as well as many other things.

But I hope you all have a safe, joyful, and God -honoring weekend and Lord's Day, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater