Was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month? And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be no night there, And they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. And he said unto me, these sayings are faithful and true. And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. And I, John, saw these things and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren the prophets and of them which keep the sayings of this book. Worship God. And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. And he which is filthy, let him be filthy still. And he that is righteous, let him be righteous still. And he that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star. And the spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. and let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things that which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, having made ourselves to be excluded from the garden, to be kept from the tree of life by our own sin, then we cry out to you in praise of your grace that you have made it that we, through Christ, will take of that fruit freely, eating it continually in that state of blessedness. We're grateful for it. We believe that all of these benefits described are all through the glorious work of our Lord Jesus Christ in his life and on the cross. And so we bow down in praise. We cry out that we want it to be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that is glorified here. We're studying into our history as Baptists, but we don't want to glorify and exalt Baptists, but only the Lord Jesus Christ. Let it be that all of our study and all of our teaching to each other about how Baptists emerged and developed and all of that. Lord, may it be that it points us to our Lord Jesus Christ, to your grace at work in these people of the past and at present. We ask that what those men were led to do in your will that we will learn to do as they did and whatever were their shortcomings, you'll teach us that we may serve our Lord Jesus Christ in righteousness. You know how sinful we are, how sinful I am and all of these brothers and sisters. We ask that you will so work in us that we will bear the fruit of the spirit that the good works you've laid out for us to do, that we'll be able to do. Lord, we ask that you will give us a rich love for one another. We ask that you'll give us a rich love for our fellow Baptists who are in all kinds of errors. Lord, please help us not to sit in judgment of them, but to love them as brothers. Lord, be merciful to them as you've been merciful to us. Lord, we're so thankful that when our brother Dave had cancer, that you so helped him that he was able to be healed of it and that you're helping him to deal with the problems in his mouth. Lord, please sustain him that he may speak to this congregation without trouble. And Lord, please speak through him that it may be our Lord Jesus Christ speaking his word to us. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen. Dave Hendricks is our speaker for the next lesson. Uh, he will be bringing to us a lesson on the historical origins of the Southern Baptist convention. Uh, Dave serves as the pastor at Santa Teresa Baptist church in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Hello. My name is Dave and I'm a Southern Baptist. And my assignment this afternoon is to speak on the history of the origin of the SBC. And I first want to give credit to a number of scholars, historians, without which this lecture would not be possible. In particular, I want to mention James Rogers, who wrote a book on Richard Fuhrman and his life and legacy, and you'll see why that's important here as I speak. A wonderful, wonderful book by a man written by the name of Albert Vale. who wrote a book called The Morning Hour of American Baptist Emissions in 1907. And you know, when you're doing any kind of research at all, and you're looking at different historians and their books, and when everybody is quoting from Albert Vale, you say, I got to go by Albert Vale. And interestingly enough, that book's no longer in print, but you can buy it on demand. They publish a copy for you for like 13 bucks, and that worked out really good. A man by the name of Barnes, who wrote a book called The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845 through 1953, and that was published in 1954. And there's a number of others here, but without their work, this paper would not be possible. 293 Baptists met in Augusta, Georgia on May 8th of 1845 for the first inaugural meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. One of the churches in attendance was the High Hills Church of Santee from South Carolina. They sent three messengers. Now this would otherwise be insignificant, except this church was the alma mater and first pastored of a man by the name of Richard Furman. And Richard Fuhrman was not unexceptional. Historians have suggested that Fuhrman, who died 20 years before the convention first convened, was the genius that laid the foundation and established the climate that firmly committed Baptists to a structured denominational program. And in preparing this paper, I was hoping to identify something or someone that I could wrap this story around. I wanted somebody like a hero. And I was hoping that the history leading up to the origin of the Southern Baptist Convention would read more like a nonfiction novel. And my research led me to the name of a man I had never heard before. My hero, my hero's name is Richard Fuhrman. He was a fifth generation American of Puritan descent. He was a direct descendant of John Fuhrman who came over on the boat with John Winthrop in 1630. And it's been said that today's Southern Baptists trace back to the years when his leadership was a dominant force in shaping Baptist life. So who was this important Baptist? Well, Richard Fuhrman was born on October 9th, 1755 in Esopus, New York. And as an infant, his family moved to South Carolina. He had little formal education, but he was taught by his father. His father, for a number of years, had been a schoolmaster. And his first book was the Bible, from which he learned to read. His father had him reading Homer's Iliad by the time he was 11 years old. And it's said that when he was 11, he had actually memorized the first book of that epic poem. Furman taught himself several languages, including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. And when he was 15, his family moved to the frontier land in the high hills of Santee, which is just east of what is today Columbia, South Carolina. His father had taken advantage of a government land grant program through which he received 250 acres. And land grants were awarded in those days on the basis of 50 acres for every slave owned. And this would seem to suggest that Wood Furman owned at least five slaves at the time. Now, Wood Furman raised his family in the faith of the Church of England. But when they settled in the High Hills area, they found it destitute of any of the means of grace. But a man by the name, a pastor by the name of Joseph Reese, was a pastor of the neighboring separate Baptist church in Congaree, would occasionally visit the High Hills region for these three day long preaching meetings. And it was during one of these meetings in 1771, where at the age of 16, Fuhrman was converted to Christ. And he was baptized some months later after becoming personally convinced from the word of God that the doctrine of baptism was for believers only. Now, there were two brands of Baptists that existed in the colonies at the time. There were the Separates and there were the Regulars. The Separates were influenced by the preaching of Whitefield, and they sprang out of the Northern Congregationalists. And they insisted that the church be independent of the state and that they contained only regenerate persons. Many separates took on Baptist views, and according to Hugh Wimble, he said that separate Baptists emphasized man's sinfulness and preached Christ's atonement, and they urged visible, listen, visible regeneration as a prerequisite to baptism. Their preachers excelled in exhortation, and their hearers responded by crying, and screaming, and shouting, and trembling, or giving other visible proofs of regeneration. They practiced believers' baptism, the weekly observance of the Lord's Supper, the laying on of hands on all baptized believers, foot washings, love feasts, the right hand of fellowship, the holy kiss of charity, and the dedication of babies. Separate Baptists were predominantly Armenian, and they were deathly allergic to confessions and creeds. And most Separates were regarded by others as poor, illiterate, and depraved fanatics. Now, on the other hand, there were the regular Baptists. They trace their origin to the inestimable Philadelphia Baptist Association. And consequently, they were confessional and strongly Calvinistic. The regulars opposed the separates, their responsible and indiscreet enthusiasm, at least as they saw it. And their expression in noisy preaching and public praying by women, and most importantly to them, was a carelessness in examining preachers for ordination. Furthermore, there was a deep, resentment by the backcountry men against the coastal dwellers and plantation owners because of the disdain with which the backcountry men were generally treated. The preponderance of Baptists along the coastal regions in South Carolina were regular Baptists. Now in 1770, the High Hills Church was gathered as a congregation, and two years later, in 1772, it constituted as a separate Baptist church. So Richard Fuhrman entered Christendom as a separate Baptist. Fuhrman quickly proved to be an extraordinarily gifted man in the ministry of the word, and the church in High Hills had just constituted, and though Fuhrman had not yet been ordained, they invited him to preach quite frequently. And then in 1774, at the age of 19, he was ordained into the Baptist ministry, invited to become the first pastor of this newly formed High Hills Church. It's the same High Hills Church that was engraved in the delegate list in the inaugural meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. As the war of independence approached, Furman proved himself to be a patriot. At the age of 20, in the first year of his pastorate in High Hills, Furman advocated for the new Continental Congress and support for correcting the grievances against the mother country. Separate Baptists in the frontier were not particularly eager for a conflict with King George. They were far removed from the coastal area and not as much affected with the egregious taxes on tea and other imports. So Furman traveled extensively throughout the back country trying to persuade the Tories. The Tories were those who supported the king. not to oppose the efforts of Congress or the colonies in their dispute with the magistrates. So he spoke so eloquently in support of the Continental Congress, the commanders in South Carolina refused to, they rejected his attempt to enlist. John Rutledge, who was then the president of South Carolina, you remember that there was no nation yet. He advised him to return to the back country. declaring that his influence there as a minister and supporter of independence would be more valuable than a soldier in uniform. Thus, Richard Fuhrman toured Western South Carolina, winning Tories to the American cause and stirring up patriotism. And the British General Cornwallis said that he feared Fuhrman's prayers more than any two armies, and that he put a 1,000 pound bounty on his head. Oliver Hart, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, had fled in February when the British fleet arrived. And when, I'm sorry, Furman, here we are. In May 1780, Charleston fell to the British. British troops quickly overran the state, and in Augusta, they had marched through high hills, and Furman's home was now a mere 20 miles from Cornwallis's field headquarters. Furman, with a 1,000 pound bounty on his head, and with the encouragement of his own church, moved his family north up to the border area between North Carolina and Virginia. And there for two years, he traveled throughout the region preaching to the troops bivouacked in the Sandy Creek Association area. In 1782, the British were pushed back to Charleston and eventually into the sea, so with the help of friends from the High Hills Church, they moved him back to his home and to his church in 1782. There, Furman continued to serve the High Hills Church until after five years of prodding, he accepted a call to become the pastor of First Baptist Church Charleston, which was the first Baptist church in the South. It was a large church and a very important church. but had been without a pastor since Oliver Hart left in 1780. So still only 32 years old, Furman came to Charleston with an impressive resume. He had founded a church. He had served with distinction as a patriot and a minister and unifier during the War of Independence. He had left a church that during his 13-year ministry had started five new churches. And he already had developed a wide reputation as an effective orator. By inheritance, he owned a plantation, 750 acres. His wife of 13 years had recently died, so when he departed for Charleston, it was himself, his mother, his three surviving children, and several of the estate's servants, which were probably Negroes, Negro slaves that had been willed to his mother by his father Wood when he passed away. Furthermore, he was leaving a separate church for a regular church, but Furman was ideally suited for this, He was raised in the Church of England, and though he had become baptistic in his faith through the itinerant ministry of Joseph Rees, he never supported those wild spiritual exercises of the separates. He woefully called them evils which attend separate revivals in a letter to a friend in England. Furman had also been mentored early in his career by Oliver Hart, a Calvinist from First Baptist in Charleston, and a man by the name of John Gano, a Calvinist from New York, who was sent as a missionary to South Carolina by the Philadelphia Baptist Association. And Tom Nettles in a paper published in the Founders Journal called Furman a strong Calvinist of the historic experiential kind. And so by the end of the 1700s, hundreds and hundreds of separates were converting to regulars and placing themselves under the Philadelphia Confession of Faith. The separates were essentially disappearing. And by 1800, the term separate and regular ceased to exist among Baptists. Baptists began to present a unified denominational front from Maine all the way to Georgia. And this kind of providence of unanimity was essential to the creation of a national body of Baptists in 1814. So as we enter the 19th century, there is one primary unifying interest that brought many, if not most, Baptists in the new republic from Maine to Georgia together, and that was missions. A secondary interest common to both the North and the South was pastoral education. And then a dividing interest that appeared in the 1830s was the abolition movement. And so what I'd like to do is take each of these in turn, and I'm going to begin with the mission interest. Baptists in America were slow to organize above the local church level. It took 100 years before the forming of the first Baptist Association in Philadelphia in 1707. Philadelphia stood alone for 44 years until the Charleston Baptist Association was formed in Charleston, South Carolina in 1751. It was the first association in the South and the second pastorate. of Richard Furman in one of the most important organizations used in the formation of the SBC. The Sandy Creek Association came in 1758, only three years after Shubel Stearns arrived in North Carolina. This is an amazing feat, an association formed three years after the arrival of the man who started it. The Warren Association gathered in 1767 in Warren, Rhode Island. And for five years, it was the only association in New England. So in 60 years, only four associations of Baptist churches were organized in the colonies. The original intent of associations was not missional. Albert Vale writes that its purpose was to promote fellowship and to give advice. Stronger churches were to help the weaker churches. Yet Baptists knew that there were tasks that were just too large to be accomplished by any one church, and that cooperation was going to be required, and one of those tasks was missions. It was not until 1755 that Baptist mission work began beyond the local church in America. The Philadelphia Association sent two missionaries to North Carolina with their support being provided by member churches in the association. And a decade later, in 1766, the Philadelphia Association established the first permanent fund by American Baptists for the support of missionaries in the field. And this fund was financed through quarterly collections by churches and administered by trustees on behalf of the association. This was an epic advancement in missiology that we operate, fundamentally we operate today, 250 years later. By the beginning of the 1800s, mission activity was firmly rooted in the local association of churches. By 1814, in the South, there were at least 60 Baptist associations with a combined membership of over 110,000. Now, amazingly, the associational approach to missions was challenged in the early 1800s by another method that had been adopted in England to provide support for William Carey. It was well known that Carey appealed to his local association to support his mission work, but evidently he was refused. And so Carey went around the association, and in 1792, 12 ministers meeting in Mrs. B.B. Wallace's parlor in Kettering formed the famous Baptist Missionary Society. And so consequently, the great missionary movement in England began financing itself primarily through volunteer mission societies. Now the society model differed from the associational model in that it was not tied to a church. It appealed to individuals or any organization that had an interest in the purpose of that society. It obviously had the advantage of a single person, and it was not encumbered by church politics. In the society model, a small group of people could meet in a home, take up an offering, and use it to fund whatever they wanted. And the most successful society in the United States was the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society, formed in Boston as a collaborative effort between first and second Baptist churches in 1802. So this is the picture in America at the beginning of the 19th century. Baptist missions were divided philosophically by these two models. The societal model was preferred by Baptists in the North, and the associational model was preferred by the Baptists in the South. Membership in the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society was secured by the payment of $1 annually from anyone Baptist or not. Furthermore, the character of the donor was generally not too seriously questioned. Not so with the associational method. Members in the associational mission enterprise were churches and their organizations. And secondly, the associational model allowed for the support of many benevolences while the society model was specific to one. The only interest for a society organized to support foreign missions was foreign missions. But an association can act denominationally, meaning that it can support many benevolent activities, such as foreign missions, domestic missions, education, and publications. And this was an essential requirement for the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. The second article of the Southern Baptist Constitution, which is prepared in 1845, said, it shall be the design of this convention to promote foreign and domestic missions and other important objects connected with the Redeemer's kingdom. And in today, the SBC calls those other important objects entities. And today, there are 11 entities tied to the SBC. Six of those are seminaries. Also, under the associational model, one could not be appointed to a missional enterprise unless they were a member of a church belonging to the association. This was obviously not a restriction in the societal model. Mission methodology was not a trivial issue. It was highly political and one of the causes for the breach between the northern and the southern states. It is interesting to me anyway, that Baptist conducted mission work quite successfully for, uh, using the associational model for over half a century. And then within a decade, within just a decade, it substantially changed the societal model and veil estimates that there were at least 65 societies organized North of Philadelphia alone to raise money for missions. And I believe that there was so much excitement for missions in the turn of the century, and societies could make things happen so much faster than associations could. And so the shift from associations to societies was more pragmatic than it was philosophical. Now, a few Baptists early on were already thinking of organizing beyond the local association level. In 1767, the Philadelphia Association defined the object of associationalism under the metaphor of a threefold chord. One, the local church. Two, united in district associations. And three, for the purpose of forming a union of associations. Richard Furman long anticipated the advantages of a national association of associations. And in the beginning of the 1800s, he began to correspond with Dr. Thomas Baldwin of Second Baptist Church up in Boston. Second Baptist Church had a national, about a national union of Baptists, and he proposed to make up, that it would be made up of delegates from associations and state conventions. Now, there's no underestimating the importance of Luther Rice in the advancement of mission interest in the United States. Following his baptism in 1812 in Calcutta, Luther Rice returned to America in 1813. And his purpose was to organize American Baptists in the financial support of the mission work that was being done for the Judsons in Burma. And this was a monumental task, considering that at that time, nationwide, there were 115 Baptist associations and 175,000 members in their churches. And one man has come to the United States to organize them. And there was only one stateside mission society at the time, and that was the Massachusetts Baptist Mission Society. And it was during a journey from Boston to Savannah in 1813 and 1814 that Rice wrote a letter to Judson that a plan had come to him while he was on the stagecoach from Richmond to Petersburg. He wrote, the plan which suggested itself to my mind is that of forming one principal society in each state, bearing the name of the state, and others in the same state auxiliary to that. And by these large or state societies, delegates to be appointed to form one general society. Rice met with Furman when he arrived at a meeting of the Charleston Baptist Association, and Rice addressed the meeting on the subject of foreign missions. And he said in that address that he had returned to the United States to see whether Baptist churches here will do anything towards sending missionaries among the heathen nations, to which the providence of God seems to directly point. Rice was directly echoing Furman's long-held interest in missions. In 1800, Furman asked of his own association, is there not at this time a call in Providence for our churches to make the most serious exertions in union with other Christians of various denominations to send the gospel to the heathen or to such people who, though living in countries where the gospel revelation is known, do not enjoy a standing ministry in the regular administration of divine ordinances among them? In Georgia, Rice met with William B. Johnson for the first time. You'll recognize Johnson's name as the founding president of the Southern Baptist Convention. There is extant correspondence from Rice, much later in 1835, that says, Rice says, that it was Johnson who first proposed a national meeting of Baptists to lay plans for foreign missions. Now, on his return trip through Charleston, Rice met again with Fuhrman and stressed the importance of his presence at the first meeting of American Baptists, which was evidently put into motion when Rice was down in Savannah, although I don't know that there's any record of that. Fuhrman was then 58 years old. He was not in the greatest of health. but he was under great pressure to go to Philadelphia. His church gave him a leave of absence until winter, and for his last sermon before departing, his text was Acts 20, 22. And now behold, I go bound in the spirit of Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there. And he began his journey from Charleston to Philadelphia on the 15th of April, 1814. He intentionally avoided the sea routes because of the British blockades. We were still in the war of 1812, and England controlled the sea lanes. And the resulting long, arduous trip took 32 days by carriage. I'm never going to complain about American Airlines again. He arrived just in time for the convention to convene on 18 May. The gathering at First Baptist Church in Philadelphia were delegates representing 112 Baptist associations. Albert Vale in his Morning Hour of American Baptists wrote that, as a deliberative body adequately handling great issues, it stands out colossal and distinguished. Biographer James Rogers asserts that at that time Richard Fuhrman went to Philadelphia He was perhaps the most influential Baptist in America and among the best-known Baptists in both America and England. It was therefore logical that he be called to the chair and subsequently elected to be the president of that first convention. There were only 30 men in attendance from Massachusetts to Georgia. representing almost 200,000 Baptists. But representing Georgia was William B. Johnson, then only 32 years old. And Fuhrman became a mentor to Johnson, who was told by a mutual friend to be sure to consult Dr. Fuhrman on every occasion. The delegates adopted the name the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination of the United States of America for Foreign Missions. But because it was planned that the convention would meet every three years, it was convenient to call it the Triennial Convention, or what became known really as the General Convention. And Furman was asked to preach the closing sermon of the convention. It's a long quote, but it'll help you get an impression of the gravitas and the commitment of this man to mission. He said, 400 million of our fellow creatures spread over the countries of Hindustan, Siam, Tartary, China, and its neighboring islands, various parts of Africa, America, and the isles of the Pacific Ocean are involved in the darkness of paganism. Their idolatry is associated with customs absurd, sanguinary, and obscene. The female character is sunk in servility and wretchedness. Millions in Europe, Africa, and Asia are revering the Arabian imposter as a messenger from God and the Koran as their guide to paradise. 10 millions of our race are Jews, scattered throughout every nation, and are everywhere resting in their law and rejecting their Messiah. In many sections of our globe where Christianity is publicly professed, It has been so mixed with vain superstitions, its doctrines so misinterpreted, its duties so mistaken, and the means by which it has succeeded. Thus was launched, according to Hugh Wemble, the modern mission movement. He wrote, The modern mission movement brought the two methods, association and society, into conflict. And so the triennial convention adopted a compromise. From associationalism, the convention derived two features, a denominational name, and it limited membership to Baptist associations, thereby withholding membership from individuals. From the society method, the convention also derived two features, membership based on gifts of money, and the objective specifically limited to one purpose. And in this case, it was foreign missions. Vail paid tribute to the work of the 1814 convention. He said, it was in some appreciable sense the inauguration of one of the great forces for the salvation of the world. It may be deliberately questioned whether any Baptist vote ever meant more for the denomination or for mankind. The Triennial Convention essentially formed a national society dedicated to foreign missions. But Furman had visualized something much grander than that, a general denominational body to promote ministerial education and domestic missions in addition to foreign missions. And now switching gears here to the educational interests. This one will go much quicker. One of the areas that Fuhrman was disappointed with in the Triennial Convention was its neglect for the consideration of how they were going to do pastoral training. And in his closing sermon in the first convention, he said, it's deeply regretted that no more attention is paid to the improvement of the minds of pious young a youth called to the gospel ministry. He said, while this is neglected, the cause of God must suffer. In 1790, while president of the Charleston Baptist Association, Furman obtained approval for a committee outside of the association for the purpose of soliciting and managing education funds. This became known as the General Committee. And one of the stated goals of the committee was to collect funds for the express purpose of assisting pious, young men designed for the ministry. And the manner in which funds were to be collected was that each church within the association once a year would preach a charity sermon, and the funds collected would then be designated to the purpose of education. And George Washington University began as Columbia College. And it's still the name of the university's liberal arts and science college. But the origin of Columbian College traces back to Furman's emphasis on education as the president of the Triennial Convention. Furman laid before the second Triennial Convention in 1817 a plan much like the one that had been in operation in Charleston Association for 26 years. He proposed that Baptist churches throughout the United States and their adherents form themselves into education societies for the purpose of aiding pious young men who appear on good evidence to be called of God to the gospel ministry in obtaining such education as may fit them for extensive usefulness in the cause of the Redeemer. And as they did at Charleston, he proposed that a charity sermon be preached once a year by every church in the Baptist denomination from Georgia, from Maine to Georgia, and that the money would be designated for education. Now, Firm was emphatic that his proposal should not begin until there was adequate funds that had been collected. He wanted to see the money before anybody began to spend the money. And this requirement became a major source of strife between members of the Triennial Convention. So there's the good news and the bad news. The good news was that the Philadelphia Association had been operating a small local seminary in Philadelphia, and they agreed to cooperate with the general convention, and that small little seminary was adopted by the general convention to become the convention's seminary. But the bad news was, to everybody's astonishment, without convention approval, Luther Rice and several others took it upon themselves to purchase 46 and a half acres in Washington at a cost of $60,000, $6,000 to relocate the seminary. And Furman was dismayed. He said opening a seminary, employing a faculty, buying land for two schools in Washington, and taking similar initiatives without securing the approval of the general convention, he believed to be a serious mistake. In fact, he said, as for our reputation, I fear now it is already gone and that we shall be set down in the ranks of children. See, Furman's concern proved to be prophetic. The theological department opened in 1821 in Washington, D.C. It added a classical department in 1822. Construction was underway at a fast pace. Student enrollment was on the rise, but as early as 1822, expenses were exceeding revenues and the debts was piling. And by the 1823 Triennial Convention, this is just two years after opening the doors of the seminary in Washington, D.C., the college was heavy in debt and a committee was appointed to investigate. By 1826, the college was so overwhelmed with debt that Luther Rice used some of the convention's mission funds to cover the debt and act clearly in violation of the action of the convention that authorized the school in the first place. And evidently, convention funds were also being used to cover some of Rice's journalistic enterprises. And consequently, where Rice's primary responsibility was to go throughout the country to raise money for foreign missions, he spent the rest of his life raising money to cover the debt and support the finances of the school. And at the 1826 meeting of the Triennial Convention, the board decided to divest itself of Columbian College. The school operated as a private college until 1898, and then in 1904, by an act of Congress, it reverted to a secular status and changed its name to George Washington University. Richard Fuhrman did not live long enough to see the Triennial Convention's major theological seminary fail, but he lived long enough to propose resolutions that would have saved it had they been implemented According to Rogers, both Fuhrman and Rice saw the need for a Baptist theological institute. Both believed Washington was the right location, but Fuhrman was a pragmatist and Rice was an idealist. They disagreed on how and when it should be done. Rice rushed in. Fuhrman advised caution. The year after Fuhrman's death, Fuhrman University opened its doors in Greenville, South Carolina. And it was successfully started by the Charleston Baptist Convention. In 1855, James Pettigrew Boyce was made the professor of systematic theology at Furman. And under his leadership, in 1869, the theological department separated from Furman, and it formed Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, fulfilling Furman's dream of a Southern Baptist institute devoted to pastoral education and training. The seminary, as Dr. Duke K. McCall pointed out, grew up alongside the Southern Baptist Convention rather than inside it. Its roots are in Baptist individualism rather than Baptist organization. It rose not on the shoulders of the denomination, but on the personal sacrifices of many individual donors. Well, now. If missions and education united American Baptists, slavery divided it. At the Triennial Convention in 1814, slavery was not an issue. The first anti-slavery newspaper wasn't published in the United States until the 1820s. W. W. Barnes pointed out that slavery was not a divisive issue until the 1830s. In 1837, Baptists held 115,000 slaves, and that was only exceeded by the Methodists who had 200,000 slaves. And it's important to understand that Baptists in the South had deeply come to see slavery as an institution of the land, and they felt that they were powerless to abolish it. Furman was raised in a slave-owning family. In fact, he was a lifelong slave owner. And when Furman was president of the South Carolina Baptist State Association in 1822, he wrote at the request of South Carolina Baptists and apologetic to the governor of the state on the subject of slavery. Now, this letter was written on the heels of an attempt by a slave insurrection that was led by a Negro by the name of Denmark Vesey. This is a famous story. He lived in Charleston for almost 40 years. And Vesey plotted to incite some 6,000 slaves to rob banks and kill men and ravage the women and seize the ships. It was a huge plot. The public became aware of the plan when a servant informed on the plotters. Arrests followed, and trials were held, and 35 black men were hanged, including Denmark Vesey. But the ease with which a few black men with natural leadership ability could plan and organize such a conspiracy created fear among the white people in South Carolina, particularly in the Charleston area. So Charleston in 1820 had a population of 14,000 blacks and 10,000 whites. So when the newly formed South Carolina Baptist Convention met in 1822, it asked President Fuhrman to convey to the governor the sentiments of the convention on the lawfulness of holding slaves. And he wrote in a 10-page treatise this excerpt. Because certain writers on politics, morals, and religion, and some of them very highly respected, had advised positions and inculcated sentiments very unfriendly to the principle and practice of holding slaves. These sentiments, the convention on whose behalf I address your excellency, cannot think just or well-founded, for the right of holding slaves is clearly established by the holy scriptures, both by precept and example. See, Furman sincerely believed that slavery was a divinely appointed system and that it afforded a mission opportunity to convert slaves and aid in their spiritual formation. Furthermore, he believed that slavery was an economic necessity for the southern plantation owner, and he was one. And because of his reputation, Furman's lengthy and thoughtful exposition gave southern Baptists and the southern states a theological framework to justify their pro-slavery position. But by the 1830s, regional opposition to slavery took the form of abolition. In 1833, the English Parliament passed legislation that required the elimination of slavery in the kingdom within five years. English Baptists, who were very high on their success in England, began to write to Baptists in America. In 1833, they said, is slavery not an awful breach of divine law, a manifest infraction of the social compact which is always and everywhere binding? And if so, are you not as Christians, and especially as Christian ministers, bound to protest against it and seek by all legitimate means its speedy and entire destruction?" So the pressure was on. It was coming from the other side of the Atlantic. The General Convention responded cautiously. They wrote, we have the best evidence that our slave-holding brethren are Christians, sincere followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. In every other part of their conduct, they adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. We cannot, therefore, feel that it is right to use language or adopt measures which might tend to break the ties that unite them to us in our general convention. and to array brother against brother, church against church, association against association, in a contest about slavery. So clearly, the general convention of churches was seeking to prevent a split of any kind. But within three years, the winds were shifting among Northern Baptists. By 1838, Baron Stowe, pastor of Baldwin Street Church in Boston, and a leader of the convention, urged his English brethren to be patient and not to think us tardy in accomplishing an objective which we, as well as they, are anxious to see immediately affected. So the lines are being drawn. In 1835, the Charleston Association took up a strong defense of slavery, calling abolitionists mistaken philanthropists and deluded and mischievous fanatics. The clergy of Richmond, Virginia, including several Baptists, unanimously passed resolutions that they earnestly deprecated the unwarrantable and highly improper interference of the people of any other state with the domestic relations of master and slave. They said, the example of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles in not interfering with the question of slavery, recognizing the relation of master and slave, giving affection and instructions to both, is worthy of imitation of all ministers of the gospel. Now, on the other hand, the Baptist Association in Hancock, Maine in 1836 wrote, of all systems, of inequity that ever cursed the world, the slave system is the most abominable. And so we see churches in the North, one by one, were being persuaded to condemn slavery and to disfellowship themselves from any churches that would not. Churches, in 1840, the Charleston Association, seeing a rapid shift in sentiment, voted to consider the necessity of forming a Southern Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. And this is kind of like a foreshadowing of a coalescing of Southern and Baptist churches around the idea of a Southern convention. When the general convention met in Baltimore in 1841 for its triennial, A determined effort was made by both Northern and Southern leaders to maintain the unity of American Baptists. William B. Johnson was elected the president of the convention, and he was the last president elected from the South, and he would become one of the founders and the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. Macbeth observed that many leaders from the North and the South dreaded division and did all they could to avoid it. But supporters for abolition were growing rapidly among the ranks of Northern Baptists. And then the crisis came in 1844, first with what was called the Georgia Test Case. Georgia Baptists were not satisfied that the neutrality assurances of the Home Mission Society, this was a society that was adopted by the Triennial Convention in 1832, But they weren't satisfied with the neutrality assurances of the Home Mission Society that they were genuine, considering that most of the people on the Home Mission Board were anti-slavery. So the Georgia Baptists decided to nominate one of their own, a man by the name of Joseph Reese, who was also a slaveholder, for appointment. But the Home Mission Board refused to consider him for appointment because it was known that if he was selected, it would result in a mass walkout of many of the northern churches. This made the Alabama Baptists very nervous. Alabama Baptists had contributed regularly to support the missionaries that were appointed by the Foreign Mission Board of the General Convention. But they were loathe to continue to do so should radical elements on the board deny approval of Southern missionaries because they were slaveholders. They did not want a repeat of what happened after the Home Mission Board rejected James Reese from Georgia. And so they decided to stir the waters. Basil Manley Sr. drafted a resolution from the State Convention of Alabama to the Foreign Mission Board. In the resolution, he said that it is our duty at this crisis to demand from the proper authorities and all these bodies whose funds that we have been contributing or with whom we have in any way been connected, we demand the distinct and explicit avowal that slaveholders are eligible and entitled equally with non-slaveholders to receive any agency, mission, or other appointment which may run within the scope of their operation of duties." Manley had a personal interest in this because he also was a plantation owner and he owned 40 slaves. The reply of the Foreign Mission Board of the Alabama Convention was not encouraging. They said, if anyone should offer himself as a missionary having slaves and should insist on retaining them as his property, we could not appoint him. One thing is certain, we can never be a party to any arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery. So the line in the sand was crossed. The official position of neutrality had been violated. And so consequently, in April of 1845, the Virginia Baptist Foreign Mission Society took the initiative to call for what Barnes called a consultative convention, a consultative convention. It was time to see if there was enough support for a Southern Baptist convention. And so they wrote an open letter to the Baptist denomination in America. And they said, dear brethren, We separate, not because we reside at the South, but because the Foreign Mission Board has adopted an unconstitutional and unscriptural principle to govern their future course. The principle is this, that holding slaves is under all circumstances incompatible with the office of the Christian ministry. For ourselves, we cordially invite all our brethren, North and South, East and West, who are aggrieved by the recent decision of the board and believe that their usefulness may be increased by cooperating with us. We invite them to attend the proposed meeting. The date of the convention was set for the 8th of May, 1845. The week before the convention met in Augusta, the South Carolina Baptist Convention had their meeting. William B. Johnson was the president of First Baptist Charleston, as well as the president of the South Carolina State Convention. And he would be the only man present at both the Triennial Convention in 1814 and the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. He would be the only one who claimed to the presidency of both. And in his presidential address to the South Carolina State Convention, he said, I invite your attention to the consideration of two plans. The one is that which has been adopted for years, separate and independent bodies for the prosecution of several enterprises. That is a society model. The other proposes one convention embodying the whole denomination together with separate and distinct boards for each benevolent enterprise. And thus the plan for a fully orbed Southern Baptist convention was launched. When it was all said and done, in the preamble of the minutes of the inaugural meeting of the SBC, says, we the delegates from the missionary societies, churches, and other religious bodies of the Baptist denomination in various parts of the United States met in convention in the city of Augusta, Georgia, for the purpose of carrying into effect the benevolent intentions of our constituents by organizing a plan for eliciting, combining, and directing the energies of the whole denomination in one sacred effort for the propagation of the gospel. When the Southern Baptist Convention was organized in Augusta, Georgia, the new denomination numbered hardly more than 350,000 members, and of those, 100,000 were slaves. And since 1845, the SBC has grown from 4,100 cooperating churches with 350,000 members to 42,000 churches with over 16 million members. And Richard Furman's first church, High Hills of the Santee, is still a member this day of the Southern Baptist Convention. Well, in conclusion, James Rogers wrote that Richard Furman's Real significance historically is not in the finished work of his lifetime, but in what he did to shape the future of Southern Baptists and their institutions. He wrote that no one prior to him had developed a plan to support such an array of benevolent objectives as education, home and foreign missions, Sunday schools, tract societies, religious journals, temperance in the seminary in Washington through a single agency. His DNA is in the present day SBC mission-mindedness and educational emphasis. And as an experiential Calvinist, I think that he would very likely approve of who we are and what we're doing here in this place, now almost two centuries after his death. Dr. William R. Williams wrote a ferment The providence of God gives few such men to the world as Dr. Fuhrman. Where others were great, he was transcendent. And where others were fair and consistent in character, he stood forth lovely and luminous in all the best attributes of men. All the rigor of his noble intellect was consecrated to God. And he lived during a time when God was bringing hundreds of Arminian Baptist churches into the reformed and confessional faith. And God is doing the same thing today. He's bringing hundreds of Arminian Baptist churches under the conformed and confessional umbrella. And so, you know, we should not forget the history of the SBC. My church was started by the SPC. We have a church building that was paid for by the SPC. And I think just about any of us who have any relationship at all with the SPC can point to something good that has resulted as a result of that. And though so we're certainly, you know, committed to a reformed and confessional Baptist faith and in all our energies, all our mission energies and all our energies towards education. We need to remember where we came from. I thank God for the great men that he has raised up within the Baptist faith now for over 250 years. Dear Lord, we do thank you for our history. We thank you for the great men that you've raised up to lead us in the Baptist faith. We thank you for those Southern Baptist churches that we might have wandered into one day and heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and were saved. We thank you for those Southern Baptist churches in which some of us were baptized and married in. And we thank you for those Southern Baptist churches which are bringing out of error and bringing into the truth of a confessional and a reformed faith. And we pray, Lord, that we may continue to have some positive influence in our lives and our energies in this direction. And we pray this in Jesus' name.