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COURT ORDERS CHURCH TO VACATE PROPERTY
[Distributed by Way of Life Literatureās Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Copyright 2000. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites and cannot be sold or placed by themselves or with other material in any electronic format for sale, but may be distributed for free by e-mail or by print. They must be left intact and nothing removed or changed, including these informational headers. This is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our goal is not devotional but is TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO ASSIST PREACHERS IN THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THIS APOSTATE HOUR. If you desire to receive this type of material on a regular basis, e-mail us, give us your name, address, and the name of the church you are a member of, and request to be placed on the list. Please note that this is not a free service. We take up a quarterly offering to fund this ministry, and each subscriber is expected to participate. To unsubscribe or to submit a change of address, send your name and the request to fbns@wayoflife.org. This is not an automated list. Changes in the database often require two to four days to activate. Some of these articles are from O Timothy magazine. David W. Cloud, Editor. O Timothy is a monthly magazine in its 17th year of publication. Subscription is $20/yr. Way of Life publishes many helpful books. The catalog is located at the web site -- http://www.wayoflife.org. The End Times Apostasy Online Database is also located at this site.]
October 4, 2000 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - A federal judge has ordered the Indianapolis Baptist Temple to vacate its property by November 14 to pay off a $6 million IRS tax lien. U.S. district Judge Sarah Evans Barkerās order gives federal marshals authority to use force as necessary to complete the eviction (Indianapolis Star, Sept. 28, 2000). The Indianapolis Baptist Temple (Indianapolis, Indiana) does not recognize the governmentās authority to collect taxes from a church and has refused to pay the amount demanded by the Internal Revenue Service. In 1984 Pastor Greg Dixon ordained all church employees as ministers and refused to withhold income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes. The church was sued by the IRS, and a federal appeals court ruled against the church in August of this year.
While we believe the United States government is being unreasonable and heavy-handed in taking the property of a church for failure to pay taxes, we also believe that Christians should not be tax rebels. The Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles paid taxes even though the taxation was admittedly unrighteous (Matt. 17:24-27), and the books of Romans and 1 Peter instruct Christians to do the same (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:12-15).