Dr. Thom Rainer from LifeWay news release:
My passionate desire is to be a bridge builder in the Southern Baptist Convention. Not to compromise biblically. Not to be soft in my theology. I desire true collaboration with those of uncompromising biblical certitude to reach a lost world with the gospel of our Savior. My prayer is that the conservative resurgence will now grow into a Great Commission resurgence.But our witness is compromised when a spiritually lost world sees us fighting with one another, when they see unloving words hurled without restraint, when they see terse comments cloaked in civility – when they see little evidence of Christian love.
Would you pray with me that the world will see us as men and women who love the Lord with all of our hearts, and who love one another? Will you be a part of the conversation that shifts from negativity to Great Commission obedience?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It would really help in building bridges, if we better understood our past – especially that period from 1700-1850. Take, for example, the issue of sovereign grace or the tulip outline every one who does not believe it seems scared to death of it, They can say, “Just look at the Hardshell Baptists.” Those who do believe it, often seem heavy handed in their application of it – as if the only way to get the message across is with a sledge hammer. My studies in the period under consideration suggest that the whole issue is far more subtle than most folks imagine, that these doctrines are far more evangelistic (after all, they are at the heart of the First and Second Great Awakenings and the beginnings of the Great Century of Missions (Latourette’s term)), that the folks who believed them were the first to practice trying to be reconciled and work together with differences, that they were so successful that 255 congregational churches became baptist churches in the Awakening periods (so C.C. Goen), that the things we so much dread might well break with blessing on our heads in the Third Great Awakening, the one that takes the whole earth in one generation and perhaps for a 1000 generations. I was impressed with Mr. Spurgeon’s devotional for Dec.24: “We anticipate the happy day when the whole world shall be converted to Christ.” Not bad for a man who also wrote about an atonement for Judas just as much as for Peter, “I despise – I reject it. I may be called Antinomian or Calvinist for preaching limited atonement; but I had rather believe a limited atonemtn that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than an universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of man be joined with it.” (MTP,IV,p70). I could quote more, but the point is plain: THERE IS MORE TO THE OLD THEOLOGY THAN EITHER ITS REJECTERS OR ITS ADVOCATES SUSPECT. IN FACT, THE SECRETS OF AWAKENING, UNITY, COMPASSION, LOVE FOR MISERABLE SINNERS, WINSOMENESS LIE HERE. Consider Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, Shubal Stearns and John Gano, the uniting of Separate and Regular Baptists, the utilizing of educated and uneducated ministers, of calling other protestants “our pedobaptist brethren”, of winning religious liberty, of Luther Rice, chairing the committee of Sandy Creek Assn that drew up the Confession of 1816 which clearly reflects the theology of Sovereign Grace which is the parent of the Abstract of Principles of Southern and Southeastern and which also reflects clearly the Sovereign Grace Theology of the Second Great Awakening. You all might look at W. Brownlow Posey’s History of the Baptist Churches in the Lower Mississippi Valley, read the minutes of Philadelphia, Charleston, Sandy Creek, Ketockton, Kehukee, Elkhorn, the Memoirs of John Gano, the Writings of John Leland, John Taylor’s History of Ten Baptist Churches, Luther Rice’s Memoirs in which he states “Predestination is in the Bible and you had better preach it” and add a present work, especially Dr. Eusedin’s Introduction to his translation of the Puritan William Ames’ Marrow of Divinity in which he says, “Predestination is an invitation to begin one’s spiritual pilgrimage.”
Dr. James Willingham,
Very well spoken… are you perhaps working on a book on this topic? If so I would love to read it!
Grace Always,
Greg Alfords last blog post..johnMark on Christless Christianity
To Greg: Well, not exactly. I have the materials for a number of works (e.g., “The Intellectualism of the Bible,” “I Cors.13,” a church history, etc., but being somewhat computer challenged (my children say), I have made little progress. Also not many publishers are interested in subjects that are not popular. Amazing, is it not, how conservative subjects in some areas have become so popular today, that secular firms buy out old conservative evangelical publishers? And yet they still do not want to work with people on the cutting edge. Might be costly. Truth usually is.