The Ohio Bible Fellowship Visitor

On November 14, 2004, there was an “historic” occasion when four professed evangelicals, the Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God, a Mormon author and BYU professor, and a contemporary Christian music singer spoke, preached, and sang with thousands of Mormons and evangelicals in the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, Utah. This occasion was called “An Evening of Friendship.”The event was organized by a group of churches called Striving Together, represented by its director, Greg Johnson. Ravi Zacharias, a popular evangelical Christian apologist, preached for an hour. Before he spoke, however, President Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary provided the opening remarks, beginning with a forthright “apology” and admission of evangelicals’ “sinning” against Mormons through the last century and a half. He described the recent opportunities evangelicals and Mormons have engaged in: “important matters of public morality;” “dialogues” that are “frank but friendly exchanges about important faith topics;” and now their meeting together this night, evangelicals “experiencing the gracious hospitality of the LDS leadership, who have welcomed us all into this meeting place.”

Many evangelicals have responded to this “Evening of Friendship” by comparing it to Paul’s preaching of the gospel to the Athenians at the Areopagus in Acts 17. Such a comparison seems to give a biblical basis for evangelicals participating in this both ecumenical and inter-faith “event.” But is this a true comparison? Were Mouw and Zacharias really preaching the gospel in the same way Paul did? Are Mormons Christians after all? Can Christians work together with Mormons?

Continue reading ‘Trouble at the Tabernacle’

In each of our quarterly Conferences we pass a series of resolutions in order to make practical application of some of our principles and convictions to current issues. The following resolutions were passed in our Fall Conference of 2004.

Continue reading ‘Fall Conference Resolutions’

We sat at the breakfast table discussing the hurricanes which have devastated our Southeast and the Caribbean islands. We were particularly concerned about missionary relatives on Jamaica. They had been warned by the U.S. Embassy to leave the country. However, they were staying. They felt that leaving would be a poor testimony to the Jamaicans who had to stay.Before we prayed for them I opened the Bible to read. Our passage that morning was Psalm 148. My jaw dropped in surprise as I read the last phrase of verse 8: “stormy wind fulfilling His word.” I stammered to my wife, “How apropos is that this morning?” We had been talking about stormy winds. The verse clearly proclaimed to us that the stormy wind was doing the will of God. That stormy wind meant devastation of homes, loss of property, hardship for many, and death for some. How could that stormy wind be doing the will of God?

All of this led me to think about God’s part in nature, and natural catastrophes in particular. As I thought about that with my Bible three things seemed to stand out.

Continue reading ‘Stormy Wind Fulfilling His Word’

Is it ever dangerous to think? It all depends how you think. Ideas always have consequences. Our thoughts drive our actions. How we think determines what we do. Jesus pointed out that actions find their source in the heart (Mark 7:21). Proverbs 23:7 says that a person is defined by how he thinks in his heart.
The area of thought then, is very important. Worldly thinking is extremely dangerous. Christians must realize that the world has an agenda. The ideas routinely propounded in the news media, in the entertainment industry, and in the realm of secular education have a definite flavor to them— a flavor that is decidedly anti-Christian in nature.

Since Christians are in no way immune from the influence of worldly thinking, the Bible commands us to “gird up the loins of our minds” (1 Peter 1:13), “be renewed in the spirit of our minds” (Ephesians 4:23), “be transformed by the renewing of our mind” (Romans 12:2), and think on things that are “true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report” (Philippians 4:8). Listed below are four dangerous shifts in thinking that Christians are prone to make.

Continue reading ‘Dangerous Thinking’

You may not be aware that Memorial Day, celebrated on the last Monday in May, was formerly called “Decoration Day.” The day was originally established to Honor United States soldiers and sailors who have died in wars. The custom began soon after the Civil War. In 1868, Gen. John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, named May 30 for decorating the graves of Union soldiers.

This past week, I officiated the funeral service of an 89-year-old man who was a long time attendee of the church which I pastor. Because this man was a veteran who fought in the Army Air Corps during WWII, he was given full military honors at the gravesite service. At the conclusion of the interment, two soldiers, fully dressed out in Class A Uniforms, stood at the head and foot of the casket. As a part of the protocol for full military honors, the two soldiers initiated a series of very precise synchronized movements which demonstrated the respect and esteem that all the witnesses surrounding that casket should have felt for this man who had put his own life at peril in military service some sixty years before. As the two soldiers began this ceremonial rite of honor, they first lifted the flag that was draped over the casket and very carefully, deliberately and with much dignity folded the flag. After folding the flag, both of them paused to stare at the flag and then saluted it with a slow motion cadence as the other soldier held it. After placing it in the hands of the widowed wife and offering some words of condolence and gratefulness, the quiet silence was interrupted by the sound of a trumpet playing a final taps.

Continue reading ‘The Sovereignty of God Over the Nations’

I began my educational career at Wheaton College in the happy days before new evangelicalism. One of the favorite dates for upper-class men was to take their girl friends to St. Charles, Illinois and go canoing on the Fox River. One of the campus leaders became famous on such a date. He paddled his lady up the river on a spring afternoon, pulled in the paddle, and lazily enjoyed good conversation. Unaware of the slow current, he and his lady love were suddenly awakened when they went over the dam. They became folk heroes on campus.

Ineluctable Drift
I was reminded of that incident when I read a paragraph in the May, 2004 issue of the Calvary Contender. The paper quoted John Leo from the U. S. News and World Report who wrote: “Many advocacy groups start out straight, then drift ineluctably left.” [I had to look up ‘ineluctable.’ It means, ‘not to be resisted by struggling; not to be overcome.’] He also said, “Call this ‘mission creep.’ A group starts out with a clear mandate that commands respect across most of the political spectrum. Gradually it moves to a broader and vaguer agenda, typically headed left.” Leo calls this, “O’Sullivan’s First Law,” after a former National Review editor who said: “All organizations that are not actually right wing will over time become left wing.”

The thesis of this article is: Unless a church, school, or movement is militant in its teaching of biblical separation it will inevitably drift toward new evangelicalism.

Continue reading ‘Drifting Down the River’

Early in my Christian life I attended a pragmatic, man-centered, new evangelical church. Later I learned about the Bible doctrines of God’s holiness, and personal and ecclesiastical separation. God led me out of my new evangelical background and I welcomed separatist fundamentalism as normal, Bible-believing Christianity. It was a great relief for me to find others who had not bowed to the god of worldly success and the mega-church syndrome. I was at home.Having been in fundamental circles for over ten years, I am saddened to discover that many of my peers are leaving the fundamentalist camp for what they suppose are greener pastures. They are dissatisfied with fundamentalism. They deem it non-academic, unbalanced, and embarrassing. This dissatisfaction is evidenced by the large number of young fundamentalists who apply to new evangelical seminaries. Like the early new evangelicals, my generation is blindly toning down the doctrine of separation, thinking that it will fix fundamentalism.

Continue reading ‘The Concerns of a Young Fundamentalist’

Every student has favorite teachers or authors who have impacted and helped set the course of his life. There are many fundamentalist personalities from the past that can serve as great examples for us today. I would like to give you three that are worthy of mention: Robert T. Ketcham, Richard V. Clearwaters, and William E. Ashbrook.

Continue reading ‘Three Fundamentalists I Have Known’

A few years ago, during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I noticed the sign of St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Mentor, Ohio. It displayed two lines of letters that are permanently etched in my memory:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Bingo Thurs. Night at 7:00

I am still unsure whether to chuckle or grimace at the ironic combination. Yet, the lines raise questions that are of great importance to Bible-believers, even those in fundamental churches: Can “the way of the Lord” and gambling coexist? Is gambling a legitimate activity for Christians? Does the fact that gambling is legal make it moral? What; if anything, does the Bible say about gambling? What is society’s view of gambling, and how should that affect the church? These questions have never been more relevant to Christians. Let’s begin by considering society’s view of gambling, and then we’ll compare that view with Scripture’s.

Continue reading ‘Should Christians Gamble? Don’t Bet On It.’

Dr. H. T. Spence is President of Foundations Bible College, Dunn, NC, and Editor of “Straightway,” the printed outreach of Christian Purities Fellowship. The following article, used by permission, was published in the August/September 2003 issue of “Straightway.”

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Sir Edmond Hillary’s climb to the top of Mount Everest. Reaching 29,028 feet, Mount Everest is part of the range of the Himalayan Mountains that stretches approximately 1500 miles across Asia. In attempts to reach the top of the world’s tallest mountain, 150 have died primarily due to avalanches.

In order for any individual to reach to such heights, a process called acclimatization must occur in the body. Due to the decreasing amount of oxygen in the atmosphere as one ascends, the body adjusts by doubling the amount of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Time is needed for this period of adjustment. A steady of ascent from sea level to Mount Everest’s summit would result in sudden unconsciousness and eventual death. Most climbers of Everest undergo the process of acclimatization around 22,000 feet; at this height they stop to rest for several weeks allowing the body to become acclimatized to the thin atmosphere. In order to climb the remaining 7,000 feet, many take additional oxygen with them.

Philosophically, our generation is at a most dangerous time period of human history. An antichrist is coming (though “even now are there many antichrists”) who will take over the whole world for a time appointed by God. In order for this to happen, philosophical, political, social, and religious changes must take place universally. To make it to the top of the universal acceptance of Humanism, where a man will be declared as God (2 Thessalonians 2:4), the countries of the world will have to pass through acclimatization to secularism. We are now waiting for this acclimatization to be completed. Any country that believed in God in generations past must now be acclimated to global apostasy; only then will “the man of sin” be universally accepted.

Continue reading ‘Acclimatization to Secularism’