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.

Fighting for the Lead

Bob Jones University had a well-organized network that kept track of various Christian publications, conferences, and churches. They began attacking Christians who were not in obedience to BJU, denouncing them across America and forbidding God's people to have anything to do with them. They took a new and strong stand for "secondary separation," teaching that we were to disobey the Biblical commands to fellowship with Christians who would not obey BJU. Eventually, they expanded this false doctrine to forbid Christians from associating with anyone who associated with anyone who associated, etc., with anyone whom BJU did not approve of.

Drunk with power that neither God nor man had given him, the president of BJU forbad any Christian anywhere to criticize him or his practices, and forbad Christians to fellowship with anyone who did. And with large numbers of fundamentalist churches being pastored by BJU grads, strong, fundamental evangelists who had already been rejected by moderate Christians found themselves unable to get speaking engagements if they did not did not obey him. He drove deep divisions into fundamentalists, isolating them from Godly Christians and groups who realized BJU's errors, as well as isolating them from each other.

Their new magazine, "Faith for the Family," spread this fighting into congregations whose pastors would not obey BJU, and he invented the word "pseudofundamentalist" to describe Christians who obeyed the Biblical commands to love one another.

And then it all backfired.

The Key Wrong Stand at the Key Wrong Time

As independent Baptists grew rapidly under the blessing of God, they formed careful alliances with Godly fundamentalist soul-winners from other groups that were not quite as conservative as they were.

At the same time, Bob Jones University was a large, successful, strongly fundamentalist institution with high academic standards. They taught and demanded strict loyalty and obedience from their students, and helped churches and evangelists with recommendations. Their graduates pastored a large number of fundamental churches, many of them independent Baptist. And the obedience of those graduates to BJU was fading.

BJU watched as their independent Baptist graduates fellowshipped with individual preachers from groups that BJU did not approve of. Already weak in doctrine, BJU couldn't compete with the powerful preaching and teaching of the independent Baptists, who were now starting to form their own colleges.

The fragile bonds that held fundamentalists together were growing stronger, while the powerful bonds that held BJU and its graduates together were growing weaker. And BJU decided to take its stand.

To be continued...