When the Fighting Starts

An interdenominational Protestant church would accept anyone as a member if they claimed to believe the Apostles' Creed. Not all of them really did, but it wasn't enforced. Becoming an elder was fairly easy. The church constitution required twelve elders, and the church rarely ran over 100 in attendance. Almost anyone could be an elder if he wanted to.

The pastor told me that when liberals would try to seize the church and turn it away from God, the fundamentalist elders would usually quit the church because of the criticism they were getting.

The Decline of Christian Schools

As a Christian school teacher, I often would have a lying student in the pastor's office, accompanied by enraged parents, claiming innocence. The standard procedure was that the teacher would tell the truth, the student would lie, the parents would go into a rage, and the pastor would back the student.

But I eventually learned from the students that the pastor already knew that the student was lying, and the parents knew it as well. Both the parents and the student would brag about all the trouble they had caused in getting revenge on the teacher. I went to the pastor, who explained that I wasn't looking at the big picture, and he was, so it was all right for him to lie that he didn't know whom to believe.

The Christian school movement in America has fallen heavily from its heyday in the sixties and seventies. Godly, experienced teachers quit, leaving the ranks filled with inexperienced teachers. My own observation was that less than half of all Christian school teachers would enter their third year. Poor discipline, poor education, and a contempt for the pastor by the parents and the children became more and more normal.

Compromise worked in the short term, but not in the long.

Does Anyone Respect a Compromiser?

Decades ago, Robert Jordan started a church the hard way, literally going door-to-door. He told me that when he was starting out, he talked to a strongly fundamentalist Christian who taught a large men's Sunday School class in a large compromising church.

Jordan asked the man to quit his class and teach a small class in Jordan's church instead. The man politely refused, stating that he could do more good where he was. Over the years, the compromising church repeatedly split the man's classes, until he had a handful of men left, while Jordan's group had grown into a mega-church.

Modernists tolerate Christians as long as they have to, but they undermine their work for God as soon as they are able. And Christians who think they are respected by modernists are sadly mistaken.

Even Modernists Despise Compromisers

In the 1970's, Evangelist Bill Rice told of being brought in for a week's preaching at a Godly, fundamental church. The man who was paying a large share of the expenses met Bill at the airport.

To Bill's surprise, the man did not attend the church, but was the Sunday School superintendent of a modernist church that had rejected the Word of God. The fellow explained that God had called him to stay there and be a good influence. Every Sunday, he gave a brief message from God's Word before dismissing everyone to their classes.

Rice told the fellow that he wasn't the good influence that he thought that he was, and Rice could prove it. He advised the man, the next Sunday morning, to talk about the virgin birth in his brief message, and to explain that a person who does not believe in the virgin birth was not a born-again Christina. The man agreed, and after dropping Rice off at the church where he was preaching the superintendent went to his own church.

Later that day, the superintendent picked Rice up. Badly shaken, he told Rice that the church had fired him immediately after Sunday School, citing the "extremist evangelist" who was staying at his house.

Brethren, Satan will tolerate Christian leaders in his churches, because they are an influence for keeping other Christians there, instead of in the house of God where they belong. But modernists only pretend to respect them.

Can You Trust a Compromiser?

James 1:8 "he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."


One of the churches here in the Gringo Zone of Mexico is built on compromise. To become a member, you have to believe The Apostles' Creed. Actually, you don't; you just have to say that you do. Over its fifty-year history, it has swung from rejecting God's Word to accepting it, but for the past ten years, it has accepted God's Word.

The pastor is a Godly man, and this past year, there was a major movement to fire him and replace him with a pastor who didn't believe God's Word. The church was badly hurt, but it is growing again. Middle-aged families are joining, they have some children in the congregation (we are a community of retired Gringos), and they are paying their bills on time.

What do compromising Christians do when a fight starts over God's Word? I'll be discussing that in the next few posts.

Trusting a Compromiser

James 1:8 "he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."

Nancy and I had a wonderful Christmas, and we wish all of you a Happy New Year.

Part of Christianity is dealing with compromising Christians. Folks who are genuinely born again, but who want to be "nice guys" and not offend anybody, sometimes reach leadership positions because of their ability to get along.

Can you trust people like that during a crisis?

Peter Ruckman Sets Us Free--Really

Peter Ruckman had no problem ripping into his alma mater. Some of his accusations were true, some were false, none were Christ-like, and all of them were irrelevant. But independent Baptists were surprised to learn that you could attack BJU, criticize its wrongs, and reject its authority, even though they had been taught that this was impossible.

Having been driven into steadily-smaller, hostile camps that spied on and criticized each other, independent Baptists had no one to champion BJU, and its leadership over the group virtually disappeared.

Whether disciples of Peter Ruckman, members of the Southern Baptist Convention, practicing Biblical Christianity without the word "Baptist" in their name, or even continuing as they always had been, independent Baptists rarely send their students to BJU today.

The third reason why God allowed Ruckmanism to gain such influence over independent Baptists was to break Bob Jones University's control over them.