THE
PILGRIMS:
The Pilgrims can justly be said to have been the founders of the American
Republic. The beliefs that they brought and the liberties that they cherished
produced the Declaration of Independence and our Constitutional Republic. By
faith they came to these shores and by faith they prospered, but what brought
them here? What overcame love of family and country? What compelled them to
cross three thousand miles of uncharted ocean? What compelled them to seek out a
home in the wilderness? What compelled them to plant their hopes as well as the
bodies of their loved ones in those bleak and barren, wintry and desolate New
England shores? In this issue we shall establish that it was the imperatives of
a “thus saith the Lord.” It was the imperatives of SEPARATISM that brought
them to America.
THE
DOCTRINE OF BALAAM:
In his letter to the church of Pergamos (Rev. 2:14) Christ commends this church
for faithful steadfastness in the face of adversity; however, they are also
reproved for entertaining the “doctrine of Balaam.” What is the “doctrine
of Balaam”? The story of Balaam can be found in Numbers 22-25. The children of
Israel were on the march. The proud and obstinate Pharaoh, scorning Moses’ “Let
my people go,” lay at the bottom of the Red Sea with all his hosts. The
Lord God of Israel had judged Egypt with plague upon plague and had thus
vindicated Himself and his servant Moses in the eyes of all the world. The
Amalekites, the Canaanites, and the Amorites had all fallen to the sword of the
Hebrews, and Moab was next. All the mighty signs, wonders, and victories
demonstrated by the Lord God of Israel were not lost on Balak, king of Moab.
Balak feared Israel. He realized that any military confrontation with Moses
would result in personal disaster and ruin for his kingdom. So what did Balak
do? What could he do? Well, he turned to an apostate prophet of God by the name
of Balaam and bribed him to curse the children of Israel. Balaam did his best
for Balak, but in the economy of a sovereign God it was not to be and instead of
curses, only blessings poured forth from Balaam’s lips. The direct physical
(i.e., military) attack had failed and now the direct spiritual attack as well.
Balak was wroth, and to appease him Balaam gave him some time‑honored
advice known henceforth as the “doctrine of Balaam.” What was Balaam’s
advice? Simply stated, it was to “break down the line of separation that
God has ordained should exist between his people and the world.” If this
could be accomplished, God himself would judge them, the source of their
strength would become their very destruction, and they would no longer pose a
threat to Balak’s kingdom. To implement this insidious policy, this indirect
spiritual attack, Salaam advised Balak to send his young maidens to fraternize
with the Hebrew men and seduce them into fornication and idolatry. It worked and
as Salaam had forecast, twenty‑four thousand of the children of Israel
died under the judgment of God. The Israelites later went on to victory over
Moab, but the “doctrine of Balaam” has plagued the church ever since.
THREE
POSITIONS:
Since the fall of Adam and Eve the Bible has allowed for only two positions: the
godly and the ungodly, the saved and the unsaved, the children of God and the
children of the devil, good and evil, Christ and Anti-Christ. These are clear,
logical, consistent, permanent, and stable positions. They are not the problem.
They have always existed. The problem is the doctrine of Balaam which creates
and establishes a third position, a position that is new, middle of the road,
lukewarm, inconsistent, confusing, contradictory, unstable, and transient.
Christ said, “He that is not for me is against me,” condemning the
unscriptural neutrality the “third” position labors to justify. In
Revelation 3:16 Christ recognizes the existence of the three positions,
reserving his severest condemnation for the “third” position. Christ
acknowledges the “Hot” and “Cold” and spues out the “Lukewarm.” In
other words, “be hot or cold,” “be left or right,” “take a stand,”
“be something,” “be consistent,” “have the courage of some
convictions” but reject this abominable, middle of the road, compromised,
neutral position. Let us now closely examine the three positions.
THE
HOT CHURCH:
This is the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the virgin bride of
our Savior which will be presented to him, spotless, without blame at the great
wedding feast of the Lamb. This is the victorious church against which the gates
of hell shall not prevail. This is the obedient church, rooted in the word of
God, that defends the faith and offers up the blood of her martyrs as a token of
love, loyalty and allegiance to her risen Lord. This is the pure, undefiled,
separated church that is adorning herself with good works unto the coming of her
Lord.
THE
COLD CHURCH:
This is the apostate church, the false church. This is the “synagogue of
Satan” that conspired to murder the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the church that
Saul of Tarsus served, which gorges itself on the blood of Christians. It is a
blasphemous, Christ‑denying church that has embodied within it the very
spirit of Anti-Christ. Indeed, it is the very church that one day shall accept
“the mark of the beast,” be ruled willingly by that beast, and worship that
beast openly. Read Matthew 23. This is the church whose converts are the
children of hell. This is that generation of vipers destined for hell upon whose
account will come the blood of all the righteous men of God. This is the church
that has substituted the theology of Anti-Christ for the word of God, Marxism
for Christianity, the Communist Manifesto for the Ten Commandments. and
revolution in place of regeneration. This is the logical, consistent antithesis
to Christianity. This is Satan’s counterfeit of that church which the Lord
Jesus Christ ransomed with his precious blood.
THE
LUKEWARM CHURCH:
This is the church that has been overcome by the “doctrine of Balaam.” It
has been penetrated by heresy and subversion. It is an unseparated and unholy
alliance of good and evil, part truth and part error, one foot in the world and
one foot in the church, then Christ and then Anti-Christ, then adjusting to the
world and then wrestling with scripture. Neither fish nor fowl, Christ nor
Anti-Christ, left nor right, liberal nor conservative, it is a paralyzing mass
of contradictions. Seeking to be neutral it finds itself neutralized. Without
power, victory, or vindication from on high it stands alone, but alone it cannot
stand. Having taken no stand it cannot stand and like the house built on the
sand it shifts and shifts and shifts. Cast to and fro by every wind of doctrine,
without an anchor or a rudder, without a hope or a harbor it founders. Rejecting
truth it is overcome with error. Despising to contend for Christ, it is overcome
by those who will contend for the devil. An unstable and transient position that
lacks power to rise yet hesitates to fall, it ends not with a bang but a
whimper. Its inevitable end is to surrender and meekly merge with the COLD
CHURCH and having denied Christ accept the “mark of the beast.”
GOD
IS A SEPARATIST:
As we have seen, the Bible allows for only two clear logical positions. There
are only two positions in eternity: Hell and Heaven. Between these two positions
God has ordained that there should be total and unequivocal separation:
separation here on earth and the eternal separation between heaven and hell.
Hell itself is separation: separation from God, separation from light and truth,
separation from peace and joy, from all that is good and pure. From the
beginning of history when God thrust Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden till
the conclusion of history when at the great judgment Christ will separate the
sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares, God demonstrates that He is a
Separatist.
THUS
SAITH THE LORD:
Lest any man should contest the above, let him dispute with the Word of God.
Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate
the Lord? therefore is wrath upon
thee from before the Lord. 2
Chron. 19:2
Blessed
is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the
scornful.
Psalm 1:1
I have nor sat with vain
persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers. I have hated the congregation of
evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked.
Psalm 6:4
Do
not I hate them, O Lord the t hate thee? And am
I no t grieved with those
that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them my
enemies. Psalm 139:21
Should we again break thy
commandments, and join in affinity with the people of these abominations?
wouldest not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us, so that there
should be no remnant nor escaping.
Ezra 9:14
Now I beseech you,
brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine
which ye have learned; and avoid them.
Rom. 16:17
But now I have written
unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a
fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an
extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. 1 Cor. 5:11
Be ye not unequally yoked
together with unbelievers: for what fellowship
hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with
darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?
or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?…Wherefore come out
from among them, and be ye separate, with the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing, and I will receive you.
2 Cor. 6:14
Have no fellowship with
the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
Eph. 5:11
Now we command you
brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourself from
every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he
received of us.
2 Thess. 3:6
And if any man obey not
our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him, that he
maybe ashamed.
2 Thess. 3:14
Having a form of
godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
2 Tim. 3:5
A man that is a heretick
after the first and second admonition reject Titus 3:10
If there come any unto
you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid
him Godspeed., For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
2 John 10
WHY:
Let us look at a little recent church history. Now all the old mainline
denominations once represented the “hot” position. However, by the turn of
the century most of them had been subverted at the top, especially in the
seminaries which had become citadels of apostasy, liberalism, and socialism.
When a wave of this unholy alliance of apostate Christianity and Marxism hit the
churches at the pew level we had the great Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy.
The Christians in accordance with scripture left the Christ-denying assemblies
and formed new denominations. Men such as Dr. McIntire, Dr. Machen, and T. T.
Shields, and so forth, were prominent in this battle. So far things were not too
bad. The issues were clear: the Christians were separating with a loud, clear
testimony, and the apostates were being exposed and rebuked. God was blessing
obedience and vindicating his word and if things had continued, the apostate
denominations might well have melted away as the Amalekites before the sword of
Israel. However, at this point in history Satan resurrected the “doctrine of
Balaam” and established a third position, “The New Evangelicalism.”
According to its founder Dr. Harold John Ockenga, “The New Evangelicalism has
changed its strategy from one of separation to one of infiltration. Instead of
attack upon error, the New Evangelicals proclaim the great historic doctrines of
Christianity. “This brought much needed relief to the beleaguered apostates
and guaranteed their future existence. No longer were their errors to be
exposed, no longer were their members to separate withdrawing support and
membership. The new thrust was ‘be positive’ and stay in.” Thus, the
New Evangelicalism provided a neutral zone, a no-man’s land between truth and
error. Now there was a “buffer zone” insulating the apostates from criticism
and a “Berlin wall” keeping the Lord’s people from getting out. If in
spite of this, people still separated then they naturally came over to this
middle of the road position where their progress to the right was arrested and
some were even sent back into the apostasy as “missionaries,” of course!
Now, a person attempting to flee the abominations of the church on the left (The
National and World Council of Churches) had to pass through Billy Graham Country
(The National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Fellowship)
before he can reach the spiritual safety of the church on the right (i.e., The
International Council of Christian Churches).
The results of all this were
two-fold. First, it neutralized the churches from providing any opposition to
Satan’s program. Remember that all the socialism, Marxism, and treason
emanating from Washington has had the continual blessing of the church on the
left. Nothing our politicians have done has not first been advocated by a
liberal church and preached from a liberal pulpit. The problem is in the
churches. America was founded on the word of God. Only the churches could really
defend her. The churches that could have and should have defended America were
neutralized by the New Evangelicalism. Secondly, it brought the judgment of God
upon the churches. The strength of the church, the almighty, omnipotent arm of
God had now been turned against it. Truth brings responsibility and truly “it
will be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah” than
for those who apostatize from the faith, compromise God’s graciously revealed
truth and return as the proverbial dog to their vomit. Not only did Satan
neutralize his opposition, but even as Balaam foresaw this doctrine, left the
church defenseless and exposed to the wrath and vengeance of God. America has a
church on every street corner yet never have they been so despised and ignored.
Where is the salt of the earth? Where is the faith that can move mountains?
Where is the power and influence over society that stirred our nation to become
“One nation under God”? ICHABOD!
The glory is departed from the churches of America.
CHURCH
HISTORY:
The history of Christianity is the history of separatism. God called Abraham out
of Ur of the Chaldees. He called the Children of Israel out of the abominations
of Egypt. Christ called his disciples out of an apostate and AntiChrist
Judaism. Apostolic Christianity was called to be separate from pagan temples and
heathen idolatry. Luther, Calvin, and Knox were SEPARATISTS. The great
Protestant Reformation was an act of separation from the apostasy and
corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church. Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was
a separatist leaving the church of his fathers to found one in accordance with
his conscience as directed by the word of God. The Puritans were separatists
refusing to submit to the errors of the Church of England. The PILGRIMS were
separatists, leaving their homeland, fleeing apostasy, compromise, and
persecution to stand separate, undefiled, and uncompromised, to stand for
Christ, to worship God in spirit and in truth AND IN LIBERTY.
America was founded on
SEPARATISM ....
AMERICAN
HISTORY:
The demands of separatism are consistent. Here is no room for hypocrisy! The
claims of scriptural separatism are total and encompass both churches and other
associations, both individuals and nations. This has historically been the
cornerstone of American foreign policy. Our founding fathers were separatists.
The Declaration of Independence was an act of POLITICAL SEPARATION. And how God
has blessed it! The isolationist policy of the Washington administration was the
maintenance of that political separation. The Monroe Doctrine was enunciated in
defense of that political separatism. The wise immigration policy of our
founders was to maintain that separation. America was founded as one nation
under God and her immigration policy was such as to keep it that way. Only
immigrants assimilable into a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture were
admitted. How blessed America was in those days. We have sold our birthright. We
are entangled in Internationalism and Interventionism. We have repealed the
Declaration of Independence as well as our Dependence upon God and have sold our
sovereignty to the United Nations and placed our faith and our destiny in the
quicksand of world democracy. May God forgive us. Consider Richard Nixon’s
pilgrimages to Moscow and Peking, to the citadels of Anti-Christ and to the
“seat of the Beast.” Consider our diplomatic relations with the communist
empire. Consider our alliances with the Bolsheviks as in World War II. Consider
our economic trade and foreign aid with the Soviet empire. Consider the whole
“Cultural Exchange” program and the thrust for cooperation, unity, and
fellowship with the masters of Anti-Christ. Finally, consider how God judged
Israel when she forsook the command to have no association or alliances with the
surrounding heathendom. America is unequally yoked and why should God forgive
us? Until we break what Dan Smoot has so aptly termed “Our Nations Pact
With The Devil” we can only progress in the judgment of God.
MARXISM:
God is not the author of confusion. As scripture saith, “If the trumpet
give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle.” God
requires a clean break between good and evil, between right and wrong. Let the
issues be clear and let the battle lines be drawn sharp and let each man choose
between God and Baal. God demands that the distinctives between Christ and
Anti-Christ be maintained in sharp focus and that the church give a clear and
uncompromising witness with conviction and faith. Isaiah said, “Woe unto
them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light
for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter”! To
accomplish this, God has given the church the imperatives of separatism. On the
other hand, we see Satan with his program of lies, deception, confusion, and
doubt. In the garden of Eden we see Satan creating doubt (“hath God
said?”), confusing Eve (“ye shall be as gods”), and deceiving
her with lies (“ye shall not surely die”). To accomplish this Satan
instructs his agents to practice deception, dissimulation, and intrigue. The
program of Marxism is, in a nutshell: INFILTRATION and SUBVERSION.
Assassination, terror, bombings, sabotage, and guerrilla tactics are the
trademarks of any Marxist war of national liberation. Civilized nations put
their men in uniform and march them to the field of battle. Even Hitler was that
decent, but the Marxists have given us nothing but the IRA and the Vietcong.
Every country that has ever fallen to Bolshevism was victimized by treason,
betrayal, and conspiracy. Contrast the free proclamation of the gospel and the
integrity of the Christian martyrs with the whole Satanic conspiracy. When John
Harold Ockenga rejected separatism and adopted the technique of infiltration he
adopted the program, the “modus operandi” of Marxism. From the Illuminati
with its concentric circles of half deceived adepts culminating in a
conspiratorial core of Satanism and revolution with its infiltration and
takeover of the Masonic Lodges to plunge Europe into the holocaust of the French
Revolution, to the present day machinations of the communist conspiracy, the
spirit of Anti-Christ has always been characterized by deception, confusion,
subversion, and infiltration. Yet it is under the banner of this technique that
the New Evangelicals seek to practice their ministry.
ECUMENISM:
The unity of God is in diversity. God himself is a trinity. His elect are called
out of every nation, race, and people. His word is a consistent unity yet
authored by a host of inspired individuals. The unity of the socialist is a
drab, lifeless conformity lacking expression, individuality, and character.
Satan’s program can be summed up: One World, One Race, and One Church, all
under the Beast of Anti-Christ:—Internationalism, Integration, and Ecumenism.
To establish the latter, Satan has once more had recourse to the doctrine of
Balaam. The bait, however, has become significantly more subtle and thus
correspondingly more effective than the young maidens who tempted the Hebrew men
into idolatry and fornication. The bait today is MASS EVANGELISM! The absolutely
fundamental, essential, “sine qua non” condition for any Billy Graham
Crusade is that it be sponsored by a local committee of as broad a
representation as possible. Liberals and conservatives, modernists and
fundamentalists, Arminians and Calvinists, Catholics and Protestants, must all
be lumped together, unequally yoked in full cooperation, to bring an ecumenical
gospel to an ecumenical crowd. This is the common ground on which the One World
Church is being built The evangelism receives all the publicity but the meat of
the matter is ecumenism. Decades of high powered mass evangelism has left the
churches of America spiritually and morally bankrupt and America is dying at its
soul. Not only has the bait been effective, (who would dare to speak against
evangelism?) but the hook has been equally effective. The hook is the one world
harlot church.
Nationally we have seen the
centralization of power from country to state and from state to federal levels
and become concentrated in the federal executive. The name of the game has been
POWER. Internationally we nave seen the erosion of power and sovereignty of the
nations and the centralization of power in the United Nations foreshadowing a
world government to come. Again the thrust of the matter is the concentration
and seizure of world-wide POWER. The same game is being played in the churches.
We’ve had KEY ‘73 allegedly “calling a continent to Christ” What
has the whole collective, compromised, unscriptural mess accomplished that they
could not have done individually as local churches? NOTHING! But then, they
couldn’t have been controlled and directed by a centralized executive. They
call it evangelism, but they give you ECUMENISM and POWER POLITICS! Why? Well,
Christ being God can rule his church through his ministers, called by him,
directed by his Spirit and all acting independently of each other yet all
serving a common Master and laboring to a common end. As the scripture saith,
“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the
midst of them.” Satan, however, is not God, but a creature and finite. If
he is to take over the church he must first organizationally unite it, impose a
hierarchy on it and concentrate all the power at the apex where he can then
place his personal representative, the Beast of Anti-Christ. So we see that
there is a “method in the madness” and the name of the game is “The
Mark Of The Beast.”
THE
ANSWER:
The answer, the only logical and scriptural answer, the only possible
alternative to ecumenism, is SEPARATION. The only alternative to SEPARATION is
some degree of ecumenism and, believe me, this is no place to try to fight fire
with fire. Apostasy is unreformable. This is the nature of God’s judgment on
it and the only thing you can do is to get out. Christ didn’t reform Judaism.
Instead, he founded the New Testament church. The reformers didn’t actually
reform Catholicism. They founded Protestant Christianity. The only scriptural
thing that Christians can and must do is to get out, like Lot fled out of Sodom,
to escape the sure wrath of God. Once you’re out, stay out or you’ll be as
Lot’s wife who looked backwards and was turned into a pillar of salt, or like
the children of Israel who died in the wilderness because they yearned for the
fleshpots of Egypt, or like the dog who returned to his vomit. There is no
reason to stay in. The end does not justify the means and those who stay in the
apostasy with pious excuses ought to heed Paul’s warning that their “damnation
is just” who say “Let us do evil that good may come.” “A
little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” When a steak has been poisoned
all the salt in the world won’t help it. It’s still poisonous. Neither is
SEPARATION by degrees, no more than salvation or obedience is by degrees. It is
either there or it isn’t. A communist front is a good example of separation by
degrees in practice. If you haven’t the nerve to join the Party, cooperate
with a front group. Christians should despise such hypocrisy. Those who affirm
that truth brings unity should also realize that truth separates-separates
between those who accept it and those who reject it. As scripture saith, “Can
two walk together, except they be agreed?”
Finally, SEPARATION is of
God. God has commanded it. God has given it to maintain the purity and integrity
of the church and to defend the church from heresy, infiltration, and
subversion. God blesses SEPARATION. Only those who have heeded the commandment
of God to “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her
sins, and that receive not of her plagues” and only those who have by the
grace of God broken the unequal yoke with apostasy and unbelief can claim the
promises, the promises of God. To all others, God says “He which is filthy,
let him be filthy still.” But to those who have come out God has said, “I
will be their God, and they shall be my people…and I will receive you, And
will be a Farther unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord
Almighty.”
AMEN.
