Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 22
November 26, 1970
NUMBER 29, PAGE 1-2

Baptist Church Secedes

J. Robert Martin, D.D. (Pastor, Oakwood Baptist Church)

(Editor's note: This article appeared on the front page of Baptist Bible Tribune, October 30, 1970. Read it carefully, and then turn to the editorial page for our comment on it)

Anderson, S. C. — After serving for 30 years as pastor of Southern Baptist Convention churches, during which time I served on state and college boards, I decided to secede from the convention.

Oakwood Baptist Church, of which I am now pastor, decided, by vote of 400-1, to secede with me. The church has withdrawn all support of the agencies and boards of the Saluda Association and the state and Southern conventions.

The membership of Oakwood Baptist Church is 1,200. We have experienced rapid growth since we came out of the convention. We have purchased 56 acres of land on which to build a new "Temple Complex" with facilities for a church and a Christian day school.

Our church decided that we could no longer support a convention with so large a number of its leaders embracing liberalism. And the man who says there is no liberalism in the Southern Baptist Convention is uninformed or spiritually stupid.

A Bible believing church cannot endorse the liberalism published in the literature of the Southern Baptist Convention. Most of the literature published by the Baptist Sunday School Board at Nashville, does not emphasize the teaching of the Bible, but philosophy. This literature is becoming philosophical in its approach. You cannot build a Bible believing church on human philosophy.

Much of this literature either teaches "situation ethics" or is so ambiguous it leaves the reader in a state of confusion, which is tantamount to teaching it.

In this official Southern Baptist Convention literature, the writers do not speak in terms of black and white, they do not deal in absolutes. It has been said that the great Charles Spurgeon always spoke in terms of black and white. Now, these Southern Baptist Convention writers try to make everything "relevant." They commonly prefer peace to truth. They do not relate the great truths of God to the sinner. A deviation in these great truths of God will show up in the lack of evangelism. It is poison to the soul and will lead to the shipwreck of faith.

How can a pastor afford to let this sort of thing permeate the church for which he is doctrinally responsible?

We seceded from the convention because we believe the Bible is the Word of God. How can we afford to support professors in Southern Baptist schools who are after the school of Bultmann? If we support these demythologizers we are guilty of denying the Bible as the Word of God. Of course, they say they are putting the stories of the Bible in a framework that man can understand; and this has resulted in speaking in terms nobody can understand.

Our church believes the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and without error in its original autograph. This is consistent with believing in a perfect God and at the same time believe in an imperfect Bible.

Our church came out of the convention because we are distressed with the menace of Modernism. We are facing a time when men are denying the Bible. They are saying the fish did not swallow Jonah, and that the book of Jonah is an allegory. They are saying that Mary only dreamed that the angel appeared to her. They are saying that the word "almah" in Isaiah 7:14 does not mean virgin.

These microscopic preachers have a penchant for knowledge after the order of Porphyry, a student of Origen in Caesarea, who at the time professed to be a Christian, but later studied under Platinus, a Neo-Platonic philosopher at Rome, where he acquired a penchant for new light and renounced Christianity and spoke acrimoniously against the Bible.

Most of the things being taught today by theological seminary professors were taught by Celsus, a philosopher who lived around 150 A.D. Much of the writings of these professors is written in the framework of Ken's "world-destroying thought," Das ding an sich (the thing in itself). They are saying that nothing can be known in itself; thus, no absolutes, all must be relevant.

They boast of new light and new knowledge. They are a new species of Baptists. Spurgeon said, "At the light of their great fuss and loud cry concerning so little, we are reminded:

" 'Ocean into tempest tossed, To waft a feather or to drown a fly.' "

We seceded from the convention because it is wrong to support error. There is a price to pay for the doctrinal purity of the church. And some are not willing to pay the price, and so they go along supporting institutions and boards that are denying the Bible. We are not going to follow "process philosophy." Our church has only one theme, "Jesus and the Bible." Through this emphasis we expect to maintain doctrinal purity.

Even though we are lampooned, castigated, and excoriated with countless carnards, God is blessing and souls are being saved.