We can read this. So this was our text last week, just so you have it there. It's part of Acts 15, verse 39. It says, And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from another. And the example there that we're seeing, this is Barnabas and Paul, and they are departing asunder one from another over a disagreement. And so, it's a disagreement concerning brethren. And so, Pastor G's passing out the booklets here. And anyhow, what we're looking at here is Baptist history. And we're looking at some separations that took place. And so, we are on page number 212 in the book. 212 and we are looking at division inevitable. And so, uh, brother Ramsey, if you want to skip along on this to 212, 212. Yes, sir. You got to click on it and then hit your right arrow. Not like that. There you go. Maybe not. All right. So division inevitable. Now remember what we talked about last week as we were looking at these matters of doctrinal difference among Southern Baptists, etc. And so we're looking here at their division being inevitable. It says, it is evident then that there are many factors influencing Baptists to be unified. However, that desired unity may have been wishful thinking from the very beginning. The pride that attempts to take up residence in every man's heart was at work from the earliest days in the colonies. Barnes bears this fact out in the introduction to the before mentioned book and we'll read his introduction here in just a moment. Try and drink that whole bottle again. All right. That'll be the third, fourth one today, I think. Okay. From Colonial Times. their rivalries and jealousies between the northern and southern colonies. The big problem of the revolutionary leaders was to secure cooperation among the colonies and allegiance of each of which had been directly to the crown of England. After Yorktown and the achievement of political independence, the problem was to hold the 13 independent states together. The great distances, the poor roads, the lack of facilities to travel and other means of communication hindered unity of thinking and acting. In formulating the Constitution for the basis of federal union, the jealousies between the North and South sections, between the large and small states, almost wrecked the effort. These struggles culminated in the war between the states. The same conditions that hindered unity of thinking and acting in secular life affected the Baptist groups in different parts of the land. In addition, varying emphasis in doctrine, in ecclesiology, in church polity were brought from Europe and comparable differences developed among the various groups in this country. Some of these differences entered into separation between the Baptists of the South and the North in 1845. So we'll look at barriers to unity. The disagreements among the Northern and Southern Baptists were there brewing, were there rather brewing under the surface for many years prior to 1845. And yet, in spite of all the age-old bad blood between these two factions, when the true obstacles to unity began to surface, they were much more pronounced. There were basically two reasons. Is that front door closed? Sorry, it's warm in here. Is the front door closed? just heating and air. There are basically two reasons for the division which was about to transpire. The first was a minor factor, the second was the main reason for the split. the supposed neglect of the southern colonies. The General Convention was already in place to promote foreign missions. In 1832, the American Baptist Home Mission Society was formed based in New York. Its motto was North America for Christ. The vast majority of its missionaries came from the North and were sent to fields in the North. From its inception, the society was accused of taking Southern money and using it primarily to win the North for Christ. At the same time, now y'all catch what's going on here, they had a dispute among how the funds were used. And so, this was a dispute because the the connection between them, this society that was created for the sake of mission work, this is the exact problem that we deal with, you know, why independent Baptists are independent, not part of the Southern Baptist Convention, and that is because you don't really get to control where your missions funds go. I mean, you get some say, but you don't really, in this case, you have an example here, There was a bickering among them saying, hey, we need funds to send missionaries to the South. And we're doing this, we're sending them all to the North. Now, it could be argued that maybe they were needed more in the North. I don't know. But it says here, at the same time, it was also accused of neglecting the souls in the South. Consider this scathing article which appeared in the Nashville-based Christian newspaper in 1835. It appears from the last report of the Executive Committee of the American Baptist Home Mission Society that they have not a single missionary in all Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and that they partially or entirely sustained one missionary in Mississippi, three in Tennessee, and three in Arkansas, making in all seven missionaries for these six states and one territory. Only one missionary to every 400 28,581 souls, while in the state of Michigan, they have 16 missionaries, one to every 4,000 souls supplied. Are they more needy? Some would argue yes, but are they more destitute? I mean, you know, it's Michigan, so I'm picking at Pastor G there. He just got back from a missions trip to that foreign land. Why are these states, Illinois and Indiana, so liberally supplied? They are more liberally supplied because of northern contributions and because northern preachers refused to come to the south. It is therefore apparent that the only way to produce effort in the South must be brought about by the formation of a Southern Baptist Home Mission Society. This was in 1835 they were proposing this. You see this was part of that whole argument you know because there was you know the South is a different landscape than the North. Like geologically and politically and culturally, so many different things. And so says in 1844, one year before the Southern Baptist Convention was formed, the following article appeared in the Religious Herald. Our contributions have been generally expended in the West, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and the territories of Iowa and Wisconsin. A few missionaries have been sent to Missouri. a still smaller number to Arkansas and Texas. Meanwhile, the South and Southwestern new states, equally destitute, have been measurably overlooked. There's a disagreement as to whether these injustices were actual or simply perceived. Some historians claim it was difficult to get missionaries to go to the South even when the mission society desired to send them. Whether or not this is the case is uncertain. We do know that the need in the North was far greater than in the South. The North had no separate Baptist revival and There were far less churches in the regions that the convention was focused on. Iowa, for example, did not have a single Baptist church until 1834. The anger over missions was likely being fueled by the anger over the true issue of disagreement, and that was slavery. So on that subject, the biggest reason for the South to quote unquote secede from the General Missionary Convention centered on the issue of slavery. While missionary statesman Dr. J. M. Peck and others tried to downplay the schism over slavery, the hold the Baptist or rather and hold the Baptist together, a great parting of ways was about to take place. In 1844, the board of the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination, located in Boston, passed a resolution stating that they could no longer approve a slaveholder to be a missionary. This inevitable decision was a great grief and offense to the South. Barnes said, but abolitionists were active and persistent. Churches and associations were one, first to condemnation of slavery and then to non-fellowship with those who had any sort of connection with slavery. The convention was born. Emotions ran high and the stage was set for a separation between the Northern and Southern Baptists. In an editorial review of the 13th Annual Report of the Home Mission Society, nine Southern states reporting there it said this the south will not only lose nothing by being thrust out of the northern society but it also proves that the domestic missions of the south can be better sustained in our separate existence complaints from the south only multiplied And by 1844, the Baptists in the South were nearly unanimous in support of a separation. Dr. R. B. C. Howell of Nashville, representing the General Association of Tennessee, recognized the separation from the board must come for three reasons. The board had done violence to the word of God, had violated the Constitution of the General Convention, and had reversed the judgment of the whole Church as expressed in the last session of the Convention. After much discussion, y'all, I know this is kind of heavy reading here. But bear with me. After much discussion, including varied opinions and deliberations, the Southern Baptist Convention was organized with the aid of W.B. Johnson. Upon the adoption of the Constitution, Dr. J.B. Jeter submitted the following, resolved that the individuals, churches, and other bodies approving the Constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention adopted by this body be recommended to meet according to its provisions for organization by members of delegates in Richmond, Virginia, and that this convention now proceed to the election of officers and boards of managers to continue in office until said meeting. Upon this decision, the Southern Baptist Convention was born. Southern Baptist Convention Had well over 35,000 churches in 2009. Ironically today now today was a while back He says in 2010 Southern Baptist churches can be far can be found as far north as Wisconsin and and Michigan. These are two of the states that the southern churches were agitated with because they supposedly received too much mission support. At the time the convention was formed, It would have been impossible to find a Southern Baptist Church in the North. The Southern Baptist Convention was started for Baptist churches in anti-abolitionist states and for support of missionaries in the South. Because of the sentiment of the day over slavery rights and missions, the Baptist churches in the South were almost entirely brought under the umbrella of the Southern Baptist Convention. Very few remained independent from or of the convention. So we could spend a bit of time talking about those things, understand that those folks were a product of their time. Many of the things that were culturally acceptable are no longer culturally acceptable. Many of the things, and by the way, part of the reason for that is because they were abused. They were wrongfully utilized to the things that were at the time culturally acceptable. Nonetheless, there were multiple reasons that they were fighting over this control of missions funds was really what it was all about. At least that's what they made it all about in the headlines. All right. So the North and South after the split, the Triennial Convention of the Baptist was dissolved. In the North, very few churches remained unaffiliated. So they stuck together. And so the North, Northern Baptist Convention, was founded in 1907. In 1923, and this is, so we're looking at various different conventions and organizations and associations and so on. So 1923, the Baptist Bible Union, BBU, was formed. by a conservative group of men within the Northern Baptist Convention. In 1932, the BBU separated from the Northern Baptist Convention. At this time, the BBU formed the General Association of Regular Baptists, or GARBC. In 1951, another group within the Northern Baptist Convention opposed to the compromise set out to form a more biblical group called the Conservative Baptist Fellowship, or the CBF. In 1967, renamed itself as the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, FBF. The GARBC and FBF are now acceptant of the corrupt modern Bible versions and have been negatively influenced by Reformed theology or Calvinism. The NBC, Northern Baptist Convention, Through continued compromise has become a shame and reproach to the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1950, the convention changed its name to the American Baptist Convention. In 1972, the American Baptist Convention changed its name to American Baptist Churches in the USA, ABC. Women preachers, rock music, and many other doctrinal errors and sins are earmarks of this movement. The ABC is not to be confused with the ABA. which was a split from the Southern Baptist Convention and is still much more conservative than the ABC in both doctrine and practice. The ABA is the American Baptist Association. That's actually closely related with Bogard Press, if you're familiar with them. That is not to say that we 100% agree with them, but we do use some of their materials for Sunday school. at least on the, well, yeah, we have for years actually. Although there might be slight differences. So the South and SBC, again, using their materials does not mean that we are part of their convention or part of their association. Yeah, I mean, yeah, doctrinally they're down the line. Now, the way they do missions is slightly different than us. They do have a board like board of mission like a missions board that presides over missionaries sent out from ABA churches and so those those missionaries will apply to the board if they want to become a missionary if they're approved then then the funds that go to the ABA will then fund those missionary works and you know so that rather than them going on deputation they're funded through that now sometimes they'll also do some deputation if there aren't enough funds in the ABA fund. So that makes sense. Some of these associations and stuff, we do not participate in any of those missions associations in that way. We like to decide on each individual missionary that we support. And so that's why we have them come in and spend time with us. And then we get their prayer letters and we pray for them and we communicate with them. I think that is a much better model In the sense of having a connection with the churches that support you on the other hand there are those other models they have ways that they connect you know there are like the women's missionary society where ladies get together and they get the missionaries from the from that board group and then they find ways to get a hold of them and and to encourage them in the field and things like that I'm just trying to balance it guys because you know sometimes we like to just throw them under the bus because they do things differently than the way we do we don't have a biblical directive on how we handle missions however we do have a biblical directive on having autonomous churches and so if we if we want to make a decision on how we handle missions we had to be careful that we don't just send mission missions funds to an organization that then disperses it to missionaries at its discretion what's that Yeah, yeah mission boards can sometimes have their own autonomy in a sense now some of them Recognize the autonomy of the local church, and you know you're not sending the funds Necessarily to the mission board you're sending it to that missionary But through the mission board and so that's that's a different a different scenario Let me give you an example, and I'm not trying to throw brother fit Fitzsimmons under the bus all right But Brother Fitzsimmons, he is the head of the Carpenters Project. We pray for him. We get his letters. We've had him here before. But the way he handles missions is he has established kind of like a missionary society, and those that support the Carpenters Project supporting a missionary society that then he decides which national pastors are supported financially and The the church works that are being done. And so is that all wrong? No, it's not in a couple of generations. It might be because It might be who knows how the how they decide who gets what and what's going on with that Same thing with brother Dixon right now. He's got Alliance Alliance global there there and he supports I want to say close to 300 or more national pastor church planters per year and So he brings in the funds from churches to to that that Alliance organization and then he goes around and he visits mission fields and he finds national pastors or has a Manager in that field that finds national pastors that can be trusted and he says you got one year This is His words. Kiss your wife, and in a year you can kiss her again. You've got one year, you're going to plant a church. And that's that. It's one and done. Obviously, you might pastor that church afterwards, but you're going to spend that whole year focusing on that. And so, they then provide the funds, and they say, get after it. And so, they're doing a lot of great works, but I don't know any of those missionaries. I don't know any of those national pastors. And so, that's part of the reason that we don't, and I'm not against them, But we don't as a church financially support that. I might personally once in a while give and say, hey, you know, put this toward that or whatever, but that's a little different. Not in the place of my missions giving here or my tithe here, but if I see a need and I'm like, hey, I'd like to give to that and help. I do that sometimes for church planters or pastors or whatever. Just see that they have a need and just give them something personally. But anyhow, understand that when you look at these things, that's where that concern is. That concern is there where we potentially are sending funds out to be used with no idea where they're going or what's happening with them. Does that make sense? That's why we do those things. That's why we do things the way that we do it. It helps us to maintain autonomy and to keep track of what's going on in the field. Does that make sense? That's why Pastor G went to the Philippines. Yeah, because we weren't necessarily just gonna, I mean, we had been supporting Brother Romeo over the last 10 years, you know, but off and on, not regularly, but off and on we were supporting him. And so, you know, we wanted to take that support to another level, but before we could feel comfortable doing that, we wanted to send somebody to go and make sure that the work is legitimate. Yes, he did. He sure did. Amen. All right, so back on here. So the ABA developed from churches that wanted to maintain a strong position on the ordinance and other local church issues, as well as the scriptural support of missions. The SBC was moving away from these historic positions and practices. So the Baptist Missionary Association, the BMA, formed in 1950. as a split off of the ABA. In the early 1900s, now I might be mistaken by the ABA here. I might be thinking, does that sound right? The ABA did when we were looking that up, is that the American Baptist Association? Does that sound right? Oh, he's got right there. I guess I skipped that line. It says, was started under the leadership of Ben M. Bogart. And so Bogart Press. Yeah, so that is the connection there. So in the early 1900s, there arose great controversy over the fundamentals of the faith. A bold preacher from Texas named J. Frank Norris led in the opposition of those denying the fundamentals within the SBC. This split from the SBC could, y'all know SBC is Southern Baptist Convention, I'm shortening it again now. It would produce the World Baptist Fellowship. Notice, fellowship instead of convention. Number four. I don't know if he's going to explain this, but I may have mentioned already that there were different levels of associations or connections, different levels for different reasons. Fellowships today still also support missionaries, a lot of them. For example, the Global Independent Fundamental Baptist Fellowship of Indiana. There's a GIBF that's nationwide and worldwide or whatever. But they have a local chapter. I can't remember now who the new guy is Head of that it was Bob Dickey who's a pastor out in that Hope Baptist Church. I believe it was but anyhow It's a new guy now here in Indiana, and then the national moderator was Dan Tidd for a while over there at Lighthouse. So a lot of the churches that we're probably a little familiar with were part of that fellowship or are part of that fellowship. It's a loose fellowship. You don't sign up for it. You just show up for the meeting, and if you happen to be there for the meeting and they decide on something, they vote, and the pastors represent their churches and vote on things. Last time I was there was probably like five years ago, I went to one. And I usually I'll hit them once in a while, you know, but and that's not to say that we're directly associated with them. But last time I was there, there were at least three missionary works that were being supported financially by the fellowship. And so a lot of times what those pastors would do is they would say, hey, we would like to financially support the fellowship or they would have during the fellowship they would have an offering and whatever came in to that offering would go to missions that they would vote on as a fellowship to support now that's that's their thing you know I think the proper way to support missions is through the local church and so anyhow that's where that like even a fellowship like that Another example, the Central Indiana C-I-I-B-F, the Central Indiana Baptist Fellowship. It is comprised of pretty much all the churches that are part of the Tent Meeting. except us we don't we don't officially associate okay we're not against them we like those folks we do things to fellowship with them we go these tent meetings and we help them with moving people around and we help them with their church stuff and all of that you know we do a lot of things together even even brother kaiser's joined up with with the group okay and he wasn't in a fellowship for 20-some years, okay? So the thing is, they also have, I think, three or four missionaries or missionary organizations that the fellowship supports. One of them is Daniel Freed. That's brother brother Freed's dad brother brother Samuel Freed's dad one of them is Andrew Phipps, that's brother Andy Phipps dad and he he has like a radio broadcast and some other things and and I can't remember if they I think they may support brother Daniel Freed through the VZ pack something like that I don't know anyways so there's a whole a whole aspect of that where there are where there were these fellowships support these things you say what is all this why does all this matter it matters because it there there are things that are that are going on with that and when people talk about well I'm a part of the the IFBF and I can't ever remember which one that is I think there is a BBF, still in Indiana, BBF is the Baptist Bible Fellowship, and most of these, by the way, are also associated with a school. For example, Global, the GIBF, they're associated with Heartland Baptist University, right? Then there is the, the BBF is associated, at least loosely associated, with the Baptist Bible College of Springfield, Missouri They used to be more conservative. They're definitely not anymore We accidentally had a BBF missionary in here one time. I found out like after after he got done. I was like Oh, yeah. Wow. Well, I'm glad you use the King James today because he probably doesn't usually. But anyhow, that's that's a whole other whole other thing. That's why it's important that we screen our missionaries carefully, not to say that they're like evil or something. It's just we want to make sure we're supporting. you know, like-minded folk. Exactly. So anyhow, so these fellowships and organizations, so the CIIBF, they have a local church Bible college that is run by the moderator and vice moderator, or I think they call it president and vice president, I can't remember. But that's Brother Randall Morris. He's either head or vice, one or the other. And then there's Brother Andy Phipps. Those two run that Bible Institute Bible College. I believe that Brother Hibner has recently gotten involved with his own local church bible institute and has had some teaching with that as well. And so Brother Morris has been preaching at, well actually Brother Thurman has been preaching lessons for the Bible Institute over there. But a lot of the churches that we would associate with today, they are part of, or they all have their own training plans for their people. So we have our own Bible school, Bible Institute here. McGregor Road has, they use FBI, it's a faith Bible Institute from Texas. They use their materials, but then they have their own classes. Brother Hibner's got one. You know, out there at Victorious Life Baptist Church. I want to say all of the churches have their own little Bible institute that they're doing. I was talking to Brother Thornsley the other day. Their church has one on Fridays that they do. So everybody's got like a something that they're doing, local church based. And that's, by the way, that's why we get along pretty well because we recognize the authority of local church and we point people toward local church instead of a third party type thing. But anyhow. So when we look at those things, usually associations, fellowships, conventions, whatever, they center around something. They're either centering around missions, or they're centering around a school to prepare people for the ministry, or something like that, if that makes sense, right? So on we go here, number four. the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, the BBFI. There's the other. Says, split from the WBF, the World Baptist Fellowship, in 1950 under the leadership of G.B. Vick, and was a greatly used movement. John Rawlings, Noel Smith, and Art Wilson were strong leaders of the BBFI for many years. So now the convention veers left. So we're kind of following a timeline and splitting off of the timeline, splitting off of the timeline or following the Southern Baptist Convention pretty much and splitting off of it different places, right? Now we're going back to the Southern Baptist Convention. The convention veers left. By the early 1920s, it became evident that the Southern Baptist Convention was headed to the left on many issues. Separation, both ecclesiastically and personally, has been a major problem in the convention since then. Doctrinal issues have also remained a thorn in the flesh of the SBC. When gifted men with the strength to do something about it came along, the independent Baptist movement started. Now the early leaders of the Independent Baptists were mostly men who separated from the SBC. So the Independent Baptist movement, most of them came from Southern Baptists. Not all, but most of them. We'll discuss that shortly, but for now we need to consider the creation of fundamentalism. So many things happened in the 18 and 1900s, especially in the 1900s and really even in the 2000s, the 21st century. Lots of things have happened in this area of what's going on with the Baptists today. Fundamentalism, a full discussion concerning fundamentalism was part of the first volume of the curriculum. So if you remember that, or if you don't remember that, you might need to pick up your first volume and look over that subject. But at this junction, we will simply restate that Baptists throughout the ages held to certain distinctives that caused them to hold to a rigid separation from error at any cost. In the early 1900s, the Evangelical Alliance was fighting the battle of German rationalism in their schools. These non-Baptist Protestant schools were threatened to the point of total apostasy through this heresy. When the Evangelical Alliance finally took a stand on certain basic Christian doctrines, many Baptists in their day applauded them. What happened next was an event that would hurt Baptists in many ways. Now, some people would say, well, wasn't it better? It was strength in numbers and stuff. Well, you'll see. The Evangelical Alliance produced the Fundamentalist Movement. The term fundamentalism began to be used more and more frequently as a series of books entitled, The Fundamentals, A Testimony to the Truth, were written and circulated starting in 1915. And in 1919, W.B. Reilly started the World Christian Fundamentals Association. Everyone who rejected German rationalism and adhered to certain basic Bible doctrines was welcomed to the club. Sadly, some Baptists inadvertently turned their backs on ecclesiastical separation and 1900 years of glorious Baptist history and unwisely joined the ranks of fundamentalism. Remember that most of these fundamentalist churches were the daughters of Rome, having as their origin the alleged authority the Protestant Reformation. Some of this information appeared in the Baptist Heritage Course Volume 1, The Ancient Church, on that. So, as time progressed and compromise among the various denominations reappeared, The Baptist became the sole beacon of fundamentalism. Methodism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, and the other participants in the fundamentalist movement have long since revealed themselves as apostates. This revelation was inevitable as the reformers are the corrupt fruit of the poisonous tree of Roman Catholicism. Truly, all of Rome's babies went back to mama. There you go. There could be a lot more said about that. I know there's a lot of confusion on that. Realize that during the 1900s, especially like the 50s and slightly before, during the 1900s, It was very common, and even into the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of churches that would put on their sign, Baptist churches, Independent Fundamental Baptist. And these would be titles to tell everybody that we believe in the fundamentals of the faith, we're Baptist, and we're independent. We're not necessarily connected, which is funny because you say, I'm a fundamentalist, which associates you with all the fundamentalists, but I'm independent. I'm an independent fundamentalist. okay you could just say I'm a Baptist because Baptist means fundamentalist at least it used to historically it means fundamentalist that's why well we don't have a sign out there that has all that stuff we have a sign that has these little letters that crumble when you touch them and so what's that yeah so I I thought about someday replacing that sign with a like a digital something digital that like a marquee or you know something a little better I don't know so we have some independent Baptists here hmm Boy oh boy, we're going to get into some stuff. All right, before the Southern Baptist Convention began, all Baptists were independent. We didn't have to have an independent Baptist movement or whatever. We just were independent. That's what Baptist means. Baptist by distinction means not denominational. And in the 1800s, it doesn't mean non-denominational. Non-denominational is something different. Baptist is not a denomination. Historically, it was not a denomination. Baptist was a distinction. We were distinctively Baptist based upon the things that made us different doctrinally from the rest of the religious systems of the world. Or rather, the religious systems of the world. Because Baptist is not supposed to be a religious system. It's supposed to be based upon your relationship with Jesus Christ and the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. And so, again, you know, you can get into the Baptist Distinctives. We may do that after we get done with this. We may do a short series on the Baptist Distinctives. We'll see. But the, the, just understand that we were independent. Somebody had their hand up over here. Yes, sir. Right. Oh yeah. So, ours says Glory Baptist Church. This is our little banner here. We've got the book, the blood, and the blessed hope. We stole that from a Baptist church up in Michigan. But anyhow, we didn't steal it. We just we took it and that was okay. I don't get text messages after this time. What's that? independent fundamental fellowship hmm interesting okay so so down here it says we are independent historic Baptist King James Bible I guess technically that doesn't work grammatically we are King James Bible Maybe we yeah, anyhow King James Bible sacred music. There you go. So that's just that's our description there. That's we That way people know what to expect, right? Yeah, you might say why would you tell people those things most people want to know those things What Bible do you use what kind of music you sing? And then what's your doctrinal stance? Historic Baptist doctrinal stance. What's your association with other churches? We're independent, not associated. Unassociated, however you want to put it. Yes, sir. Well, a lot of them do. If they have a regular church sign, most of them have a logo somewhere that tells you what association they're a part of. Unless they are purely independent, like us. But like, an ABC church, they'll have that little basketball thing with the cross in it. It looks like a basketball thing with the cross in it. That's an ABC church. American Baptist Churches of the USA. Southern Baptist, I can't remember what their logo is, but their logo would be on their church sign. Or it might just say SBC. What's that? I'm not sure. And I think Southern Baptist, it just says SBC. And then, you know, some of them, they have it in their name, like a missionary Baptist or whatever, you know, whatever their, sometimes their association is in the name. And so, anyhow, Independent Baptist. So, I'll restart that paragraph. Before the Southern Baptist Convention began, all Baptists were independent. There were associations, But there was not a strong power structure as would be seen in the Southern Baptist Convention. And I will add, as is still seen in the associations and fellowships today. As the years went by, the SBC took a progressive path to the left of center. Evolution found a place in SBC schools, as well as teaching, which rejected premillennialism. Okay, and just a real, real, real fast explanation of that. You have You have pre-millennialism, you have post-millennialism, and you have a-millennialism. Millennialism has to do with your belief related to the kingdom that when Jesus rules and reigns on the earth for a thousand years. We are pre-millennialists. We believe that we are living in the days prior to the millennial kingdom. Jesus will return and He will set His foot on the Mount of Olives and He will rule the earth for a thousand years presently on the planet. That is the pre-millennialist position. By the way, most fundamentalists are pre-millennial. In fact, they're pre-millennial by declaration. So, then you have the post-millennial position. The post-millennial position is that they believe that when Jesus came the first time, He was also king. And His kingdom rules now. And so that's like a kingdom today type of thing. then there's the amillennialist. That is, that Jesus is not going to rule for a thousand years. He rules in man's heart today, and we're trying to make the world a better place so that he'll come back and rule it. And that's the amillennial position. So those are the three positions on millennialism. And so here we're saying that they began to reject premillennialism, which is the position that Baptists have historically held to. And I found out this morning that Clarence Larkin is a Baptist. For some reason, I always thought he was Presbyterian. Clarence Larkin, the man who made all those charts, the charts, the dispensationalist charts. Yeah, he wrote a book called Why I'm a Baptist. I've got it in my Audible file here to listen to sometime this week or next week. So anyhow. I don't know. I don't know. He wrote a book on it. But the guy that, I've got the book in there, his book with the charts, you know, like the dispensational charts and prophecy charts and all that stuff. Clarence Larkin. For some reason I always thought, man, I can't fully endorse this guy because I know he's like Presbyterian, but he's a Baptist. Well, was. He's in heaven now, but I guess technically he's still a Baptist in heaven. What's that? No, he was Methodist. Bush? No. Clinton. Clinton was a Southern Baptist. And Gore, both. But Bush, I'm pretty sure Bush is Methodist. But he was loose Methodist. Probably fundamentalist Methodist because he said that he was a born-again Christian. Was that? No. Yeah, unfortunately all of the politician folks that are Baptist are extremely liberal. And they came to Southern Baptist Convention, that's kind of the thing. Yep. So there were problems with the convention's view of missions and who it supported. These problems, in addition to the separation issues before mentioned, would not be tolerated at all. And as a result of this, several Baptist ministers, quote unquote, pulled out of the Southern Baptist Convention. The flood tide began with Dr. J. Frank Norris. He left the convention and started the a college at Fort Worth, in Fort Worth, Texas. Next, men like Dr. Lee Robertson, Dr. Dallas Billington, John R. Rice, Lester Roloff, John Rawlings, G.B. Vick departed from the convention, Jack Hiles, Lee Robertson, Harold Sightler became high-profile leaders pastoring large independent Baptist works These charismatic leaders soon developed a large following in the 20th century independent fundamental Baptist movement was created So that was that was that so you have those those big things There's a lot of history there. Now. Listen, we're not here to endorse or or or Or demonize any of these folks. We're just dealing with the history. All right And then and there's a whole lot of you know, there's a major problem with these mega Church scenarios. What's that history is history. That's right Positive and negative history is history. It is it is what it is and So, this is still a popular movement, or was in 2010, 14 years ago. The complete assessment of this movement may be the subject of a future manuscript. There have been many positive results of the labors of the Independent Fundamental Baptist in America. There have also been negative ramifications of mixing Baptist faith with fundamentalism. And I will add one further, the negative ramifications of the megachurch movement. It's great that they're reaching a lot of people with the gospel. I'm not against those folks, by the way, but there are a lot of negative Things that go along with it. It is nearly impossible to manage 100 and keep scandal from taking place in mega churches like that And so that that is that is one major problem and listen, i'm not against churches growing Okay, we just the model that we use I believe is a biblical model and that is you you grow to your effective range and then you plant other churches. Once you get beyond the point of that effective range, you start running into problems where you have scandal and you have people doing things in the dark that become problems and a black eye on the ministry and a black eye on the Lord Jesus. Y'all that have been involved are known about larger churches. Am I wrong? No, that's what it is. That's what it is. When you maintain a smaller group of people, everybody knows each other. And everybody knows if somebody's messing up. And it can be more quickly and decisively dealt with. And sometimes it can be dealt with before it actually ends up becoming something that's now a legal problem. I'm not saying that you hide things. No, you deal with things. Sometimes you can prevent things from becoming something that they become in the darkness. Because you've got a smaller group and you're more closely accountable. Make sense? That's my personal position on those things. I believe it's a biblical position, and I think it's a practical one. Again, I'd love to have a big church, but I wouldn't. And it's because I can more effectively focus on each individual. And so, like I said, like we've done before. As a church gets too big, we start another one and send some of them off as part of it. You know, I understand that someday we may not be able to keep up because, you know, as we're faithful and we keep reaching people and people keep getting saved, we may not be able to keep up with planting churches and we may have to grow or move or, you know, have larger facilities or something like that. We may have to. That's OK. But we don't want to do it for the sake of doing it. We want to keep reaching people and keep trying to make sure they're in effective small churches that can effectively disciple them and help them to reach the potential that God has for them to continue their work that God has for them. And so, Protestant doctrine and practice crept in among Baptists and through the door of fundamentalism. Although we do not doubt the motives of the early fundamental Baptists, Leaders, not everyone did as... Not everything they did was by the book. And when we say by the book, we mean by the Word of God. Not all independent Baptists from 1940 through 1970 came out of the Convention. In fact, many were independent all along. Other leaders of the independent Baptist movement of the previous 75 years were from the South. Some of these had associational ties prior to their being swept into the independent Baptist movement, and some had no previous ties. Dr. James Beller, in his Baptist workbook, stated the following as the seven great influences on the independent Baptists of the 20th century. The Baptist Bible Fellowship, this was J. Frank Norris and Beaucamp Vick. The General Association of Regular Baptists, Dr. Bob Ketchum. The Conservative Baptist Movement, Dr. Myron Cederholm. The Southwide Baptist Fellowship, Dr. Harold Seitler and Dr. Lee Robertson. The Sword of the Lord Influence, Dr. John R. Rice. The Pastor School Influence, Dr. Jack Hiles. And the Christian School Movement. Which, by the way, that's actually a relatively new thing. Relatively. Last hundred-ish years. Before that, most Baptists would, well, before the public schools started going crazy, or after the public schools started going crazy, most would homeschool, but then they would try to have an alternative, a Christian school. A lot of these churches ended up exploding in numbers when they started having Christian schools, a lot of them. And we see that even today. Churches, in order to maintain their financial needs, a lot of times they'll start a Christian school or a daycare or something, and it will end up drawing people in. It becomes a tool to reach Christians, sometimes from other churches, to bring them over from their church. Not always the case in some cases, but Biblical Baptist. The author realizes that not everyone who is an independent Baptist today wants to be affiliated with a quote-unquote movement. Many are desirous to be known as independent Baptists and avoid the term fundamentalist. This position is consistent with that of the author. It is imperative to remember that the SBC and before fundamentalism, before the SBC and before fundamentalism, there were old-fashioned independent Baptist churches that were consistent with the New Testament church, with the New Testament churches in the Word of God. While we are thankful for the good done by the Independent Fundamental Baptist, we hope that all Baptists see problems with our attachment to fundamentalism and once again strive to be pure in our affiliations, identification, doctrine, and practice. The author identifies himself simply as a Bible-believing Independent Baptist. After we do our questions and and after we finish our live stream and we go offline I want to discuss for just a moment this matter of the independent fundamental Baptist and and it's its present-day Scenario. Okay, so we'll talk about some of that in just a moment. But let's look at our questions here real quick and then Let's see here Number one, the dress standards that Independent Baptists consider normal and the average Southern Baptist today considers extreme legalism. Number two, America would probably be a better place had the Baptist never split in 1845. Number three, the student of Baptist history should know from the independent Baptist movement came from or should know where it came from. how it started and why they are an independent Baptist. Number four, people who don't know where they came from and cannot tell you why they are what they are will rarely have the conviction to stand for what they are. Number five, when Adoniram Judson was convinced of Baptist principles, he was subsequently dropped by the Congregationalists. Number six, Luther Rice was elected to raise funds for the Triennial Convention. Number seven, there has among certain Baptists in America always been a belief that there should be some sort of centralized authority structure. Number eight, Baptist leaders south of Philadelphia favored a national denominational organization more than did the leaders north of Philadelphia. Number nine, from colonial times, there were rivalries and jealousies between the northern and southern colonies. Number 10, the General Convention was accused of neglecting the souls in the South. Number 11, the North and South split mainly over the issue of slavery. Number 12, the SBC was born in the year 1845. 1845. Number 13, the SBC had a substantial split in 1905 and the ABA was formed. This split was over the support of missions and ecclesiology. Ecclesiology, that's the doctrine of the church. By the way, that's because Southern Baptists were strongly influenced by Universalists and Calvinists, which were also Universalists, daughters of Rome. Number 14, the General Association of Regular Baptists, or the GARBC, was created in 1932 by the Baptist Bible Union. Number 15, the CBF renamed itself as the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship. Number 16, the Northern Baptist Convention changed its name to American Baptist Convention. It changed its name a few times. Number 17, the early leaders of the Independent Baptists were mostly men who separated from the Southern Baptist Convention. Number 18, as time progressed and compromise among the various denominations reappeared, the Baptists, just Baptists, became the sole beacon of fundamentalism. Number 19, it is imperative to remember that before the SBC and before fundamentalism there were old-fashioned independent Baptist churches that were consistent with the New Testament churches in the Word of God. And number 20, we hope that all Baptists see the problems with our attachment to fundamentalism and once again strive to be pure in our affiliations, identification, doctrine.