Together for the Gospel: May the Lord Bring Revival

This past week, at the generosity of Baptist Church of the Redeemer, I had the privilege of attending the Together for the Gospel Conference in Louisville, KY. The God-centered, mercy magnifying, Bible proclaiming humility of the men who spoke at the conference was enormously encouraging. This is a kind of evangelicalism, a way of being Christian, that I want to be a part of. The kind of evangelicalism put on display at the conference is united not by a lowest common denominator theological affirmation but by a fervent passion to revel in the untraceable mercy of the righteous Father expressing his love in the death of his Son and redeeming people from their just deserts by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is an evangelicalism that is denominationally diverse: Ligon Duncan ministers in the Presbyterian Church of America, C. J. Mahaney in Sovereign Grace, Al Mohler and Mark Dever in the Southern Baptist Convention, R. C. Sproul in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, John Piper in the Baptist General Conference, and John MacArthur is representative of the Bible Church movement. But these men all share a big view of the God revealed in the Bible, and their shared view of God unites them across denominational lines.

This is an evangelicalism that is spread across the country: MacArthur on the West Coast in California, Piper in the far north of Minneapolis, Duncan in the deep south of Mississippi, Mohler in the middle America of Kentucky, Sproul in the south east in Florida, Mahaney and Dever on the East Coast of Virginia and Washington D.C, respectively. Across the miles these men are united in the belief that the Bible must be proclaimed because faith comes by hearing.

This is an evangelicalism that is confessional. These men signed 18 articles of affirmation and denial that clearly define who they are and what they believe. If they ask for others to affirm these as well, sign me up.

As I mull over this conference in the coming days I may post other thoughts on it. The point of this one is to say that I pray that the Lord would use this to ignite a widespread revival. On the flight home last night I was reading Tom Nettles’ The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity, and I was struck by this passage about William Kiffin:

In 1653 a most affectionate fraternal letter was sent from Baptist churches in Ireland to ‘the churches of London under the care of Messrs. Kiffin, Spilsbury, and others’. The letter called for a maintenance of correspondence and a faithful sense of supplication and repentance before God. Every first Wednesday the churches pledged themselves ‘by fasting and prayer humbly to mourn before him for the things following’. They then listed under twelve numbers the sins of omission for which they earnestly sought repentance including such concerns as, ‘Our want of spiritual wisdom to reprove sin plainly in all without respect of persons . . . ; Our little praying and praising frame of heart; in particular for faithful labourers in the Lord’s vineyard; . . . Our little serious searching into the word of God, and not substantially acquainting ourselves with the foundation truths revealed therein; . . . Our little concern for the sufferings of the people of God; . . . our little mourning for sin; . . . Our great ignorance of the deceitfulness of our own hearts.’ These issues, plus others, seemed sufficient grounds for ‘our lying low before the Lord, that he may lift us up in due time’.

The Baptists in London, led by Kiffin, responded immediately by having a day of fasting and prayer on these very issues and sent the correspondence along to the brethren in Wales with a cover letter. ‘We shall not offer arguments,’ they wrote, ‘to persuade you to compliance with our brethren’s desire and ours.’ The statements in themselves ‘carry so much evidence and demonstration of truth, necessity and suitableness to the Gospel rule’, that no such convincing is necessary. ‘We have already kept a day of holy fasting and prayer, upon the grounds expressed; and trust we shall never lay down our spiritual weapons.’ (Nettles, The Baptists, 135–36, emphasis added).

O that God would use the Together for the Gospel conference to spur his people to widespread “maintenance of correspondence and a faithful sense of supplication and repentance before God.” O that God would use many weblogs to create and maintain correspondence, and O that many would indeed give themselves to fasting on the first Wednesday of the month, praying for God to bring reformation and revival, repenting of sin, and asking God for a hunger and thirst to know Christ.

The first Wednesday of the month is in just a few days.

Here again are the things mentioned in the letter above:

(1) Our want of spiritual wisdom to reprove sin plainly in all without respect of persons.

(2) Our little praying and praising frame of heart; in particular for faithful labourers in the Lord’s vineyard.

(3) Our little serious searching into the word of God, and not substantially acquainting ourselves with the foundation truths revealed therein.

(4) Our little concern for the sufferings of the people of God.

(5) Our little mourning for sin.

(6) Our great ignorance of the deceitfulness of our own hearts.’

We Baptists are famous for our “invitations.” I invite you to join me in repenting of these sins and fasting before God from breakfast and lunch on the first Wednesday of the month, beseeching the Lord to bring revival. Do we love him, and do we desire him to save surprising numbers of people, more than we love one breakfast and lunch a month?

With Kiffin and those on whose shoulders we stand, may we "never lay down our spiritual weapons."

R. C. Sproul on the Holiness and Justice of God

The Wednesday that Together for the Gospel began (April 26), R. C. Sproul spoke in chapel at SBTS. I was not there, but I heard that the message was phenomenal and that the place was packed.

Sproul’s address at TFG was very impressive, and you can download the Chapel address here or listen to it here.

Dan Fuller and Inerrancy

From the following quotations it would appear that Daniel P. Fuller holds to inerrancy (quotations from The Unity of the Bible, 1992):

“. . . rather than simply stating at the outset that the Bible is indeed the verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God, I arrive at this conclusion by beginning with facts and axioms and then work upward from these to establish the Bible’s verbal inspiration” (xvii).

“. . . I have felt that to follow this method was most appropriate in establishing the Bible’s inerrancy and unity” (xviii).

“In chapters 3 and 4, then, I conclude that the twenty-seven books composing the New Testament canon are also [with the OT] inerrantly and verbally inspired by God” (24).

But in describing “Black Saturday,” December 1, 1962, in Reforming Fundamentalism George Marsden recounts that

While Ockenga, as chairman, could have left it at that, he opened the door for major debate by asking immediately, ‘But why do we need a new creed?’ He could see no such need. Dan Fuller, the model of candor . . . saw his chance to assume his new leadership role. He pointed to what he saw as a vital need to revise the statement on inerrancy. ‘Dr. Ockenga,’ he asserted before the whole faculty and board, ‘there are errors which cannot be explained by the original autographs. It is simply not historically feasible to say that these errors would disappear if we had the autographs.’ He went on to explain his whole theory of the nature of biblical inerrancy—essentially, that the Bible claimed inerrancy only for its ‘revelational’ teachings, that is, matters that make one wise unto salvation. . . .

Ockenga responded with thinly veiled indignation. 'Well, what are we going to do then? Dan Fuller thinks the Bible is just full of errors' (211–12).

Then Marsden records this fascinating detail: “As a matter of course, stenographers had made a shorthand record of the entire planning conference. Within a few days the elder Fuller [Dan’s father, Charles, the evangelist who with Ockenga founded Fuller Seminary] had gathered all the notes and the transcripts typed from them and placed them in his safe. Eventually they disappeared” (215).

The account goes on,

A few days later Ockenga called him [Dan Fuller] in and asked him if he could sign the statement of faith. Fuller said ‘sure’ he could. He observed that Article II of the creed, that concerning Scripture, combined the statement that the Bible was inerrant with the classic formula that it was ‘the only infallible rule of faith and practice.’ That phrase, Fuller argued, implied that it was as a rule of faith and practice that the Bible was ‘free from error in the whole and in the part’ (216).

It seems to me that this is a classic case of “equivocation,” which exploits the ambiguity in the meaning of words or phrases. On the one hand, Fuller asserts that the Bible has errors, and on the other hand, he signs a statement saying the Bible has no errors. Then, 30 years later he publishes The Unity of the Bible and defends “inerrancy”! Did his mind change or does he mean by “inerrancy” what he meant in 1962? What Fuller meant by the term was clearly not what the conservatives at Fuller (e.g., Ockenga, Carl Henry, Harold Lindsell, Wilbur Smith) meant by the term.

Marsden recounts that in the view of at least one of the Fuller trustees, “Those who were not in accord with the creed should, in honesty, leave” (215).

Unfortunately, those who disagree with creeds are apparently never willing to leave. They stay around and either change the creed or ignore it. As Marsden notes on the previous page,

Beginning with the gradual slippage of Harvard into Unitarianism, the past two hundred years had seen an endless repetition of the same story. Most of America’s greatest academic institutions had been founded by conservative Bible-believing evangelicals. But nearly every one of these schools had eventually fallen to the onslaughts of theological liberalism, and then to outright secularism. A vast empire lay in ruins (214, and see further Marsen’s The Soul of the American University).

Those interested in a full explanation of Inerrancy should consult “The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy,” which in my view accurately represents what the Bible claims about itself.

What do you expect from the books you hope to write?

I’m reading George Marsden’s book, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, which I would highly recommend to anyone who does what I do (teach at an evangelical institution of higher learning). This is a fascinating story, and here I just want to note one thing that struck me last night.

Marsden recounts how the founding faculty of Fuller sought to put evangelical scholarship on the map, and he describes E. J. Carnell’s “great triumph” of having his book Christian Commitment: An Apologetic accepted for publication in 1957 by Macmillan in New York (181). As Marsden describes the book and its impact, he writes, “Despite some such critical remarks, Christian Commitment did not even manage to create controversy. As with most books, it was simply noticed and then ignored. Macmillan soon gave up on it and sold off the stock as remainders. To Carnell this failure in big-time publishing was a great blow” (184).

"Noticed and then ignored" . . . "Noticed and then ignored" . . . "Noticed and then ignored."

Let those words rattle around in your mind, and think about how many books you've read, and how many you've "noticed and then ignored."

This raises several questions in my mind. Whose approval are we seeking when we set out to write? What audience do we expect to influence most? And, have we noticed how the writings of others have been received?

I don’t want to be overly spiritual here, but this should remind us again that our aim should always first and foremost be to please the one before whose judgment seat we will stand and give account (2 Cor 5:9–10). Before our Master we stand or fall (Rom 14:4), and only if this reality is supreme for us will the inevitable rejections of life be bearable.

As to the audience where our influence will be greatest, I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Tom Schreiner. I was telling Dr. Schreiner about a scholar I know whose goal it is to “cause liberals to sit up and take notice of evangelical scholarship.” His reply was simply that this scholar needs to realize that his greatest influence is going to be with his students. He went on to observe that scholars almost never change the minds of other scholars, while students are often shaped by their teachers. This is not a statement that we should not hold rigorously to the highest standards of scholarship, it is simply a recognition that this high standard of scholarship will have its greatest impact upon our students. So would your approach to your work change if you thought of it in these terms?

I have read that George Ladd was also crushed when his work was ignored by the left (see the essay on Ladd in this volume). Let’s be realistic about how books, even the best books by the most astute authors, have been received, and let’s always aspire to be pleasing to the Lord.

A Practical Plan to Read

We can waste so much time bouncing from blog to blog. Let's heed C. J. Mahaney's sage advice on attacking the weeks so that we get things read.

Above all else, read the Scriptures–in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek if possible.

A Prophet in the Wilderness

My friend Jimmy Stanfield has finally started a blog. This brother is thoughtful and interesting, reads voraciously, and often has a way of helping one see the world through gospel lenses.

May the nails ring out on The Wittenberg Door, and may we hear the voice of this one calling in the wilderness, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!"

Trinitarian Expository Exultation

Dr. Bruce Ware is one of the leading theologians of our generation. He is one of the most loving people I have ever met, and he enthusiastically proclaims the greatness of the God he loves.

As soon as possible you should download Dr. Ware's sermon on the Trinity in Ephesians 1 and relish this joyful exposition and exhortation to marvel at the Triune God.

Michael Haykin on William Fraser

Here's a snippet:

Fraser died in 1883 after he had gone out to Manitoba to evangelize a community of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. The trip proved too much for the old man. To his last breath the kingdom of Christ and its extension were his passion.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Two Baptist Press Stories

Statements from this weblog have found their way into two Baptist Press stories. Comments on the Gospel of Judas were cited here, and an adaptation of the reflections on ABC's "The Ten Commandments" appear here.

SOLI DEO GLORIA

Darfur: Will We Act to Stop the Genocide?

Everyone should see Hotel Rwanda. I checked it out from the public library, so if there's a library near you it won't cost you financially. I hope it will cost you some peace of mind, however, and we should all lift our voices to decry what is now apparently taking place in Darfur. World Magazine has a piece on it, as does the New York Times.

You can see some photos here, and you can visit www.savedarfur.org for some more information.

Is it true of us evangelicals that we are beholden to the republical party, or do we have a prophetic voice in this culture?

Let's do unto those in Darfur what we would want done for us.