Déjà vu ... Déjà vu

by Al Diestelkamp

Pardon my French, but lately I’ve been getting “a feeling of already having experienced a present situation,” which is a definition of our title. It relates to how some brethren advocate for the broadening of our fellowship to include other “believers” regardless of whether they believe the doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins.

In two separate periods of time in my lifespan, this has been a troubling issue among brethren. Both times have eventually resulted in the departure of some into more ecumenical churches. In the mid-1950s, while I was a still a teenager, I recall how my father decided to move from Minneapolis to the Chicago area specifically to fight a form of modernism that had been affecting the churches over the past couple of decades. Later, in his book Here Am I, Send Me, my father wrote about the fallout just in the Chicago area alone: “In seventeen years, seventeen gospel preachers quit the Lord’s church, either to lose faith altogether, or to go to the most modernistic denominations.”

I remember how that battle continued and became a motivating factor in the beginning of Truth Magazine in 1956. My recent déjà vu feeling sent me back to my bound volumes of early editions of the magazine in which there were lengthy exchanges and debates between brethren regarding the essentiality of baptism and the resulting spiritual fellowship issues.

Some of the statements made by those who eventually “went out from us” in the 1950s are frightfully similar to what we hear some brethren saying today. Consider this quote from one such preacher who was asked if the purpose of baptism and the Lord’s supper can be realized apart from literal obedience to these rites. After giving lip-service to the importance of baptism and saying that he “would not, knowingly teach anyone to break the least of God’s commands,” he was asked whether he preached the essentiality of baptism. His response was: “I do not. I do not find the New Testament talking ofessentiality. I do not believe that every unbaptized person will be eternally lost…” (Truth Magazine, Vol.1, No.6, p.7).

I don’t know if the departures that were prevalent in the 1950s were widespread among brethren or if it was a problem peculiar to the Chicago area. I do know that by the end of that decade, the proponents of that error had migrated to more comfortable fellowships and the Lord’s churches in the upper Midwest experienced a brief period of growth and peace.

Whether the ecumenical mindset was eliminated among brethren for a time or merely went underground, I’m not certain, but by the 1970s and 80s the same attitudes were being espoused by some. I believe there was legitimate concern that, in our efforts to defend against Calvinism, the doctrine of salvation by grace had been somewhat neglected. Sermons, articles, and tracts refuted the grace-only doctrine with very little said about the positive side of salvation by grace.

To the credit of many, this imbalance in preaching and teaching was fairly well remedied, but—as so often happens—some went beyond the biblical teaching about grace and began advocating unity with some in the evangelical world. The most outspoken advocates of what they called “unity in diversity” eventually disassociated themselves with those of us whom they erroneously called “legalists.”

The real issue under consideration is just who is and who isn’t a Christian? The world attributes the name to anyone and everyone who merely professes Christianity, regardless of whether they actually possess it. Recently, we witnessed a reporter who, attempting to pose a “gotcha” question, asked a potential political candidate whether he believed our current President is a Christian. How would you and I answer that question?

The use of the name as an adjective to describe any number of things, businesses and organizations (i.e., Christian music, Christian bookstores, Christian schools, etc.) has contributed to the careless use of “that noble name by which [we] are called” (Jas. 2:7). This misuse is so common that I fear that we have gradually succumbed to the practice. When Muslim extremists beheaded 21 men who professed to be Christians, the President was criticized for calling them “Egyptian citizens” instead of “Egyptian Christians.” What did we call them?

I suppose some will view this as meaningless semantics. However, the problem arises when our accommodative use of the word “Christian” evolves into an emotional acceptance into spiritual partnership of people who have not fully submitted to the gospel. Gradually, the fact that many of our Bible-quoting, church-going, morally-upright friends have not submitted to scriptural baptism becomes less important, and the desire for unity obscures the biblical teaching that the only way one can be “in Christ” is by being “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27). Those “who do not bring this doctrine” are failing to “abide in the doctrine of Christ” (2 Jn. 9-11).

The desire for unity is an admirable trait if it is a unity based on submission to the teachings of Christ revealed in His word. We do our religious friends and neighbors no service by giving them aid and comfort in their error. What they need to hear is what other believers heard: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

 

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