DEPARTING FROM THE FAITH.
By Editor
THE following paragraph is from the Word and Way, a substantial Baptist journal, therefore Baptists will not censure us for referring to it: If Baptists had an episcopal form of government we would have on hand some highly sensational heresy trials. In the pulpit of a wealthy Baptist church the pastor stood the other day and attacked the old Baptist faith. His theme was honesty as the basis of character. Preachers, he said, are not honest in that they continue to preach old doctrines which they can no longer defend. As for him he did not believe the Genesis story of the Fall. He did not believe that we are all sinners because Eve ate an apple. He did not believe that Christ came into the world to confer righteousness on sinners. And this man goes as a Baptist and is pastor of one of the wealthiest churches in the land. In the fourth chapter of 1 Timothy we are told that “the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits.” So, however humiliating it may be to note such things, we should not be surprised when the “sure Word of prophecy” is plainly fulfilled. This is nothing against the Baptist Church as a whole; for who could “depart from the faith” but such as have once embraced the faith. The denominational responsibility rests to the extent that such teaching is endorsed by retaining and acknowledging such teachers. Another quotation from the same paper is on the same line, altho referring to a Baptist periodical. Here it is: An esteemed Baptist contemporary says: “Denominations should exist.” How a Baptist can be a consistent Baptist and give his consent to the necessity of the divine right of any other denomination is more than we can understand. There was reason for the existence of the Baptist denomination, and had they followed the light given them in their watchword, “Thus saith the Lord,” they would undoubtedly have been led to far broader conceptions of truth. But when they stopped to build a creed, they virtually said to all converts, Here is the end of truth; thus far shalt thou go, and no farther. A limited creed is always the point whence departures from the faith begin to radiate. The unrestricted Word of God always invites the seeker after truth to go on from faith to faith. “All Scripture is profitable for doctrine,” and things new and old are to be found in the law of God by faithful searching. But when one begins to deny the plain scriptural teaching, or to compromise with unscriptural doctrines, he is plainly departing from the faith. What is true of the Baptist denomination is also true of others. Perhaps they were providentially called out to maintain some neglected, tho essential, doctrine; but when they assumed that they had all truth because God blessed them in the advocacy of what they did have, and rejected error which others held before them, they cut themselves off from receiving further light from the Word of God. Hence it has been necessary, as God would reveal new light, to raise up those through whom He could proclaim it. This is not because He desires a multitude of sects, but because Gospel truth in all its fulness must go to the world. Ancient Israel had the truth, but they thought they had it all; and because they would not receive further light through the prophets, they were left in the darkness of their own traditions. Because they would not walk in the light, and accept all the truth brought to them from the Scriptures, they were rejected as a people. From this we may learn that any other sect, tho especially called out of God, will share a similar fate if they take a similar course. Israel failed because of unbelief, and it is only unbelief that causes one to halt, refusing further light from the Word. The result is sure to be compromise with error, and departure from the faith—a special characteristic of the last days.