The following is excerpted from the booklet “The Technique Catastrophe” by Evangelist Bob Creel (P.O. Box 4548, Sevierville, TN 37864, 865-712-4537 or 865-908-4244). It is subtitled “An explanation of the multitudes of false professions in the Independent Baptist movement.”

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Remember back in Nehemiah chapter six, when Sanballat and Tobiah, the enemies of the Jews, tried to get Nehemiah to meet with them so that they could stop the building of the walls in Jerusalem? When he refused, they then threatened to write to the king and tell him that Nehemiah was planning to make himself king and rebel against Artaxerxes. As an extra measure to make this lie believable, they stated that they were going to tell king Artaxerxes that Gashmu saith it was so. You’ll find this in Nehemiah 6:6.

“Wherein was written, It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel: for which cause thou buildest the wall, that thou mayest be their king, according to these words.”

July 1, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) –

“But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

While the family is the foundational unit in the church and society and is very, very important, I believe it is possible to turn it into an idol when it is emphasized beyond biblical bounds and when it becomes an end unto itself.

Christ’s Great Commission is to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth and to plant churches that are discipleship centers, the pillar and ground of the truth, where believers are trained in the service of God and in the work of world evangelism (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:17; Luke 24:46-48; Acts 1:8). This is what we see lived out in the book of Acts and it is a program that is to be perpetuated until Christ returns.

Parents who are committed to Christ will have this Great Commission before them at all times as they raise their children.

To raise wholesome, talented, law-abiding, hard-working citizens is not enough, because it falls short of what Christ commanded.

I believe home schooling is by far the best way to educate children. That is how our own children were educated, but within some home schooling circles there is neglect toward and misunderstanding of the New Testament church.

For example, on my last preaching trip to Australia I met some godly families in one of the churches. The children play various musical instruments; they have a wide variety of interests and talents; they have serious goals in life; they are getting a wonderful education; they are separated from the wicked things of the world. There is nothing wrong with any of this, of course. It is a great blessing to see close and godly families in this wicked age. The problem is with the emphasis and balance. These families do not place the church and the Great Commission in a Scriptural priority. They attend services only once service a week, forsaking the other services for “family time,” in direct contradiction to Acts 2:42 and Hebrews 10:25. They brazenly neglected the special services that the church was hosting and thus gained no benefit from the visiting preacher. Their lives could have been challenged by that preaching, but other things were more important to them.

These parents are teaching their children many good things, but they are wrong in teaching them to slight the church.

My friends, the Bible plainly states that it is the church that is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Why doesn’t it say that the home is the pillar and ground of the truth? And this is not some vague “universal” church. The context is a scripturally organized assembly that has pastors and deacons (1 Tim. 3:1-14). The believer’s service to the Lord is to be in and through such a church, in submission to God-ordained pastors and elders (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13; Hebrews 13:7, 17).

Any family that is not in proper relationship with and submission to God-ordained church authority is not in the will of God (unless, of course, no such church exists in the area). I say this on the authority of the Scriptures. I would ask such a family, “Who has the rule over you?” If the reply is, “God does,” I would rejoin that God Himself says that church elders are to have the rule over us (Heb. 13:17), not as lords over us but as under-shepherds who must, in turn, give account to the Great Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:1-4).

I understand all too well that pastoral authority has been abused at times and that this is an hour of great compromise in churches, but that is no excuse to reject it. Husbands and fathers have abused their authority at least as much as pastors have abused theirs, but that does not mean that we are free to reject them. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “I will build my church” (Mat. 16:18). It is His plan and program, and it is not to be despised.

There is nothing wrong with a “house church” as such, if that church is scripturally organized, but a loose knit gathering in a home is not necessarily a church, and a father of a family is not a pastor unless he is qualified and called and ordained (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-11; Acts 14:23).

Paul wrote to Titus and informed him that he was to “set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city” (Titus 1:5). The thing that was wanting, or lacking, was for the new converts to be organized into proper New Testament assemblies, and this required the ordination of qualified, God-called elders (Titus 1:6-16).

This is the pattern that we see in the first missionary journey. After Paul and Barnabas had preached in many places, they returned to each place and organized the new groups of believers into churches and ordained elders in each one (Acts 14:23).

A home Bible study, a home prayer meeting, a loose knit group of home schoolers, is not in itself a proper New Testament church and has no scriptural authority to replace such a church.

Some complain that “church today is not a sanctuary from the world nor is it a ‘holy’ place.”

While I agree that too many churches are worldly from top to bottom, meaning that even the leaders and workers are worldly, it is equally true that a scriptural New Testament church will never be completely holy. If a church is reaching the world for Christ as it should, there will always be unsaved and newly saved people in attendance who are not very holy, to say the least. In fact, if we were to be honest with our own hearts, we would admit that there is plenty of unholiness in the most mature of saints, as even the apostle Paul lamented in regard to his own life. “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not” (Rom. 7:18). And the apostle John added his Amen to this when he said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:9).

The New Testament church can never be a complete sanctuary from the world or a perfectly holy place for the simple fact that it is made up of sinners who are in the business of reaching sinners. Paul referred to the unsaved who attended the meetings of the church at Corinth, and said nothing to discourage the church from having the unsaved in attendance but rather encouraged them to live in such a way that they would reach the unsaved for Christ (1 Cor. 14:23-25).

A church that is busy reaching the unsaved will not only have the unsaved in attendance at services and events but will have new believers in attendance, as well, and these will be far from “entirely sanctified” and separated from the world.

I remember when I was first saved and joined a fundamental Baptist church in central Florida. I was saved; I knew the Lord; I had truly repented; but I was still a mess! I still had hair down to my shoulders; I still smoked and listened to rock & roll and attended worldly movies. Yet the church members were so patient and kind to me, opening their homes to me, spending time with me, discipling me; and it was this that helped me to grow and to begin shedding the things of the flesh and the world and putting on Christ.

The man that led me to Jesus Christ had the same attitude. He was not ashamed to spend four or so days traveling with me, living with me, enduring my foul language and disgusting habits and vain arguments against the truth.

The apostolic churches that are described in the New Testament scriptures were far from sinlessly perfect. Consider the seven churches of Asia Minor addressed in Revelation 2-3. Most of these apostolic churches had serious problems. The church at Ephesus had left its first love. The church at Pergamos allowed false teachers in their midst, including the false doctrine of Balaam that was associated with idolatry and fornication. The church at Thyatira allowed a false prophetess to teach worldly heresies. The church at Sardis had a name that it lived but was dead. The church at Laodicea was so lukewarm that Christ warned them that He would spew them out of His mouth.

Consider the apostolic church at Corinth. This church was established by the apostle Paul himself, but it was a genuine mess! The members were carnal and divided (1 Cor. 1-3); they did not discipline even the most glaring sins (1 Cor. 5); they took one another to court (1 Cor. 6); they fellowshipped with idols (1 Cor. 10); they grossly misused the spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 14); they allowed false teachers in their midst, even those who preached false christs and gospels (2 Cor. 11:3-4) and denied the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:12).

The church at Philippi was an excellent church, but two women in the congregation were so at odds with one another that they had to be corrected by Paul in a public letter (Phil. 4:2).

The apostle Peter played the hypocrite and Paul had to rebuke him publicly (Gal. 2:11-14).

Even Paul and Barnabas had such a “sharp contention” that they could no longer work together (Acts 15:36-40).

None of this is an excuse to think that it does not matter what type of church we attend or how we live, but it is a fact of Christian living and church life that we must understand and learn to deal with.

For more on this subject see “Seven Keys to Fruitful Church Membership” at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/sevenkeys.htm.
[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]

THE EMERGING CHURCH’S RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST AGENDA

June 25, 2008 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

According to emerging church theology, the object of the church’s mission on earth is not the preaching of gospel but the building of the kingdom of God on earth. It is earth-minded and mocks a heavenly-minded orientation. It gets more excited about solving the “AIDS crisis” and saving the polar bears than winning lost souls.

Emerging church writings say very little about the salvation of the soul, but they say a lot about the salvation of society and creation. Their activism runs toward all sorts of very liberal social-justice concerns--environmentalism, animal rights, you name it--anything except the winning of souls. If there is any emphasis at all upon the winning of souls, it is a secondary thing.

They use terms such as “missional” and “holistic” to define this agenda.

The Emergent Village says:

“We see the earth and all it contains as God’s beloved creation, and so we join God in seeking its good, its healing, and its blessing” (Emergent Village web site, http://www.emergentvillage.org/about-information/values-and-practices).

Tony Campolo claims that believers are saved in order to change the world:

“Our call is to be God’s agents, TO RESCUE NOT ONLY THE HUMAN RACE BUT THE WHOLE OF CREATION” (Campolo, “Why Care for Creation,” Tear Times, Summer 1992).

Rob Bell, author of Velvet Jesus, says:

“The Bible paints a much larger picture of salvation. It describes all of creation being restored. ... Rocks and trees and birds and swamps and ecosystems. God’s desire is to restore all of it. ... A Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to earth. THE GOAL ISN’T ESCAPING THIS WORLD BUT MAKING THIS WORLD THE KIND OF PLACE GOD CAN COME TO. ... To make the cross of Jesus just about human salvation is to miss that God is interested in the saving of everything. Every star and rock and bird. All things” (Velvet Elvis, pp. 109, 110, 150, 161).

The environmental part of the emerging church’s agenda is not just to keep the air clean and the streams pure; it goes far beyond that to a position that is akin to earth worship.

In May 2008 Pastor Jeffrey Whittaker attended Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change tour at Goshen College in Indiana, and he witnessed the environmental frenzy first hand (“A Pastor Reports on McLaren’s Everything Must Change Tour,” June 2, 2008, http://herescope.blogspot.com/).

The very first session was titled “Focusing on the Wounds of Our Planet.” They sang a song based on Francis of Assisi’s poem “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” and watched a DVD by the Sierra Club “exposing the immoral mining techniques used by energy companies in West Virginia.” Then they were treated to a song that cried out against “our rape of Mother Earth.” The second day’s session began with another environmentalist song that said mining is a “scar cut across the face of Mother Earth.” They were constantly reminded that “catastrophic consequences due to global warming are upon us.” Another session opened with the “Hymn of Remorse,” which bewailed the supposed desecration of the earth. “We repent for covering your colorful earth with gray cement ... for cutting down trees ... for scarring your earth ... Lord, have mercy, can we be restored? What of the lands of tribes and nations who lived here first ... the noise of traffic is drowning out the songbird’s song...”

By no stretch of the imagination can such a position be supported by the Bible. From the very beginning God gave man the right to use the earth.

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Man has a divine right to subdue the earth and use its resources, to cut its trees and mine its ore and pump its oil. This does not mean he has the right to destroy the earth and make it into a filthy cesspool; no one in his right mind is in support of polluting the air and water and such things. But God has given man the right to use the earth’s resources in a responsible manner.

The environmentalist movement is not based on proven science; it is not merely the push for reasonable conservation; it is a blind religious faith. Its most zealous proponents are gullible tools in the hands of one-worlders who intend to use the environmentalist cause to increase their authority at a local, national, and global level. When Marxist globalists jump on the environmentalist bandwagon, you have to know that something other than love for a clean earth is driving the agenda.

Jonah Goldberg has wisely observed:

“At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment. ... Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt and moral bullying” (“The Church of Green,” Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed, May 20, 2008).

As for “global warming,” it is not an established fact. In reality, it is nothing more than a weak theory; and many scientists do not believe it. In March 2008, for example, more than 100 prominent environment scientists presented papers at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York City. They concluded that global warming is a natural process rather than the result of human activity. Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, said: “The purpose of the conference is to provide a platform for the hundreds of scientists, economists, and policy expert s who dissent from the so-called ‘consensus’ on global warming” (“Scientists Meet in NYC to Challenge Gore, UN,” WorldNetDaily, March 4, 2008).

The radical environmentalist agenda is simply not based on proven science. Take the frenzy to ban plastic shopping bags, for example.

“Scientists are attacking the global campaign to ban plastic shopping bags, saying the activists’ claim that the modern conveniences are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 animals and one million seabirds is based on a ‘typo’ in a 2002 report [by the Australian government] and there is no scientific evidence showing the bags pose a direct threat to marine mammals. [The report was derived from a Canadian study in Newfoundland that only sited the death of marine mammals by discarded fishing nets and made no mention of plastic bags!] Researchers and marine biologists have told the London Times plastic bags pose, at best, a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds” (“Anti-plastic Crusaders Stuck Holding the Bag,” WorldNetDaily, March 9, 2008).

It takes more energy to make and recycle paper shopping bags than plastic ones, but banning plastic bags makes the environmental activists felt better and that is what is really important.

Consider the frenzy to save the polar bears.

“The U.S. government just put polar bears on the threatened species list because climate change is shrinking the Arctic ice where they live. Never mind that polar bears are in fact thriving--their numbers have quadrupled in the last 50 years. Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear, according to Danish social scientist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the 2007 book Cool It! Yet about 300 to 500 polar bears could be saved every year, starting right now, Lomborg says, if there were a ban on hunting them in Canada. What’s cheaper, trillions to trim carbon emissions or paying off the Canadians to stop killing polar bears?” (“The Church of Green,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2008).

The common sense evident in this paragraph is what is often missing in the environmental movement.

The movement is also shot through and through with duplicity. There appears to be a willingness to say anything and ignore any inconvenient fact as long as by so doing you can further your cause.

“During the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, much was made of Houston becoming the ‘smog capital of America.’ But Houston’s overall air quality was improving at the time. Houston became the nation's smog capital only because Los Angeles’s air improved even faster, passing Houston in a race of positives. Perhaps the commentators who spoke as though Houston's air were getting worse did not understand the issue. More likely they did not want to understand-for cleaner air would violate the rule of Good News Bad” (Gregg Easterbrook, “Bad News Good, Good News Bad,” Brookings Institute, Spring 2002).

Environmental activists have claimed that more U.S. cities are violating air standards, but what they don’t say is that the EPA standards have grown progressively stricter and that the pollution levels have actually gone down dramatically. Data produced by the Environmental Protection Agency shows that between 1976 and 1997, ozone declined 31 percent; sulfur dioxide, 67 percent; and nitrogen oxide, 38 percent. In that same period, the population rose 25 percent, the gross domestic product doubled, and vehicle-miles traveled increased 125 percent!

Activists have claimed that pollution is rising at runaway levels under President George Bush’s watch. “Yet the overall number of bad-air days has actually been falling steadily. In 2001, there were fewer than half as many air-quality warning days across the country as in 1988. Los Angeles has experienced just one Stage 1 ozone warning in the past five years, an incredible decline. During the 1970s, Los Angeles averaged about 100 Stage 1--alert days per year” (“Why Bush Gets a Bad Rap on Dirty Air,” Time magazine, May 22, 2003).

Further, the environmentalists too often focus their attention on America and other developed countries rather than the countries that are really and truly raping the earth. America has made great progress. Its water and air is cleaner than in a generation and its forests are more widespread than even in the 19th century. Bald eagles and peregrine falcons are off the endangered list; black bear and coyotes and moose and buffalo and deer and other wildlife are increasing dramatically. The Brookings Institute web site recently observed: “Arguably the greatest postwar achievement of the U.S. government and of the policy community is ever-cleaner air and water, accomplished amidst population and economic growth” (http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2002/spring_energy_easterbrook.aspx).

If an environmental activist wants to spend his energy on saving the earth, let him leave America or England or Switzerland where environmental consciousness is high and the people have plenty of resources to solve their problems, and move to Russia, India, or China, to name some countries that are true environmental disasters, and dedicate his life to solving their problems.

The fact is that the environmental movement’s dire predictions have been proven wrong for more than a half century. It has being crying “the sky is falling,” but it has not fallen. There has been no silent spring. During George H.W. Bush’s term of office in the early 1990s environmentalists were threatening a “new silent spring” of dead Appalachian forests. In fact, the forests have made a wonderful comeback.

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist Information Service, an e-mail listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. OUR GOAL IN THIS PARTICULAR ASPECT OF OUR MINISTRY IS NOT DEVOTIONAL BUT IS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. This material is sent only to those who personally subscribe to the list. If somehow you have subscribed unintentionally, following are the instructions for removal. The Fundamental Baptist Information Service mailing list is automated. To SUBSCRIBE or to UNSUBSCRIBE or to CHANGE ADDRESSES or to RE-SUBSCRIBE UNDER A NEW ADDRESS, go to http://www.wayoflife.org/fbis/subscribe.html. If you have any trouble with this, please let us know. And please be patient with us. We do not ignore any unsubscribe request, but we cannot always get to your request immediately as each person involved with maintaining the Way of Life web site does this only on a very part time basis and is busy with many other major activities, such as pastoring and missionary work. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and those who use the materials are expected to participate (Galatians 6:6) if they can. Some of the articles are from O Timothy magazine, which is in its 25th year of publication. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site: http://wayoflife.org/catalog/catalog.htm Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061. 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org. We do not solicit funds from those who do not agree with our preaching and who are not helped by these publications, but from those who are. OFFERINGS can be made at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/offering.html. PAYPAL offerings can be made to https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=dcloud%40wayoflife.org]