Capitulation

With typical ambiguity, compromise, 'lukewarmness', and liberal distraction from their 'first love', the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Louisville, KY, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first seminary, danced around a resolution of both admiration for and variance against the 44th President of the United States; the most pro-abortion, anti-life, same sex marriage promoter, stem-cell, euthanasia, bailing out with hard working tax payer members dollars, corrupt and bankrupt agencies of every kind, government and domestic, president ever elected. The liberal totalitarian Godless ideology of this president must be a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God...and God himself must be thinking, “Have these followers of Truitt, Criswell and RG Lee gone crazy?” How can any Southern Baptists with eyesight read God's inerrant word, listen to the 'fakery' of this President and his pastor (Rev. Wright), his advisers (Emmanuel, Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius) and still believe the follower of “Rules for Radicals” should be mentioned, let alone honored, by a fundamentalist, evangelical denomination is beyond my comprehension.

In 1938, Bette Davis starred in the movie “Jezebel”, along with Henry Fonda. In the movie, Jezebel, in her red dress, proclaimed that she had deliciously evil hands. I firmly believe that Jehu, arriving in his chariot at the Louisville Center, would have thrown President Hunt (who happens to be originally from this city) and his fellow resolution-revolutionists in the street for daring to proffer such a despicable act in the face of God's people, laboring in the vineyards, giving as to God their time, talent and tithes, expecting better at this time in our country's history.

Every liberal denomination that has stooped to women preachers, same-sex marriage, acceptance of homosexuality, and flirted with the theories of recapitulation, embryology and abortion, have lost church membership and influence even among antagonists of the church. Jesus was never ambiguous in dealing with deception and deceptors, “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33) Why not honor Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, Episcopal priest of a Boston Seminary who considers abortion as a 'blessing'? (President Episcopal Divinity School, NARAL member, Re: her recent speech in Birmingham, AL link: http://www.prochoicetexas.org/news/headlines/200708172.shtml )

For most of my life, hanging on by my very fingernails in a world of compromise and atheism, the spiritual foundations of the Southern Baptist Convention, the cooperative program, support for evangelical seminaries, support for both foreign and home missions, the knowledge that one denomination was left, true to the theology of God's inspired Word, kept me active and alive. I thrilled at attendance at SBCs, such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, etc Like the slow, deadly, encroachment of cancer, I saw liberalism besmirching and beguiling local churches, but I held on to the belief that the same faith that led a Christian lady in my community to leave the questionable practices of the Quaker church and with the help of her husband, build and start a small Baptist church in the community. Where, after taking mail-order lessons in playing the piano, and did all things in regard to the church until it grew and could afford a pastor. (this church is still around and alive and well; not infected yet by liberal thinking)

My family, who landed from England in New Jersey and founded Morristown, adept at the modern thinking of SBC. "Fines, confiscation of property, imprisonments, assaults by mobs, deprivation of civil rights and of educational opportunities" were a part of life for a dissenter in England. Many Baptists and Quakers were thrown into prison because they would not take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. They "followed the clear imperative of Jesus (Matthew 5:34) and James (James 5:12) to 'swear not at all.'" The dissenters offered to declare their loyalty, but that was unacceptable to their persecutors. The first refusal meant prison. The second meant the penalties of praemunire, or confiscation of all property, suspension of all rights, and indefinite length of imprisonment. The Act of Toleration (1689) brought religious freedom for all except Catholics and Jews, but the Baptists "made no special gain in numbers during the decades of larger freedom which followed, and they actually declined in zeal and spirituality."

Part of the early family left Morristown and centered in eastern NC, not exactly immune from persecution (several baptist preachers were hanged by the Episcopalians who ruled and had been given much land by Anglican, England along the coast, check out Tryon Palace, New Bern). I doubt that John the Baptist would feel fellowship with the southern baptist of NC. This writer, active at Bellevue, Memphis, churches in Alabama and NC, was asked to leave a local liberal southern baptist church because after returning from a convention I made the statement that,”I feel sure it is strange to God that southern baptists are so concerned about black people across the ocean and yet they walk by the church doors here everyday and we show no concern at all.” Was Dr. James Baker Cauthen, SBC secretary, joking when I heard him say in Memphis at a mission conference, “The black population USA needs evangelizing.” I left First Baptist, Wilmington, where I had been very generous, and my only child was on the foreign mission field.

People, like denominations, do what they do because they believe what they believe. Do you really believe in honoring an abortionist? (Killer of babies) Since January 1973, the only denomination that has tried to stop this holocaust is the Catholic church. Does it bother this liberal SBC convention at all that most of your families send children off to college who forsake their church? (estimated 75%) Does it bother the SBC that 37% of all children born in this country are born to single mothers? Does it bother SBC, that many with talent, time and ties like this writer, has left your convention because like most young people, we can recognize hypocrisy. The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. You need to learn again, if you ever knew, “Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.”

I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected veteran of the Korean Conflict, for over 40 years. I kept trying to teach, speak, give, whatever, for the work of God's Kingdom. On the tombstone of Fanny Crosby, (writer of 8,000 hymns) totally blind, are these words: “She hath done what she could.” (Mark 14:8)