Father, we want to thank you for this beautiful day for the Christmas of the air and the beauty of the leaves and the bright sky for the glory of all you've made. We pray that you'll be with us in this class, that you'll teach us. But as we think about how shape a wrestled with the issues of 40 years ago, but they may be a challenge to us as we wrestle with the issues of our day. We ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen. Last time we were discussing the article Modernism, Bartianism and the Ecumenical Movement. We were talking about the three phases of Modernism. The first phrase of Tolerate Me, the second phase the battle, and the third phase control. And we hadn't quite finished that when we came to the end of the last lecture. There were two points we made under control. Under this third phase of control, the first was that the modernists were, by that time, shape was saying in control, absolutely, of many of the major denominations. However, they faced the problem that they had, were they building new churches, were masses of people coming to their churches? No, the opposite was happening. Churches were dying, the church was losing its impact. There was a tremendous drift among young people away towards atheism. And the modernists realized that they needed a new, more vital religion. And then secondly, under this I made the point that from shape as article, into that need for a more vital religion, stepped Karl Bart with his tremendous idea. And we discussed that idea of the separation of objective truth, or rational truth, from religious truth. And the way it appeared to meet the need of the time. That today I want to look at that in more detail from another article of Shafers, that I had it out to you. But let me just conclude what he says in this one here, modernism, Bartonism, and their numerical movement. The conclusion of this kind of thinking is that all religious traditions are equally valid. The ecumenical movement then picked up on this idea. If there's no such thing as objective truth, but truth is relative to the individual. And that religious truth is different from rational truth. Then we may say that all traditions in the church are equally valid. And in that way we made build a new church, united from all the previous traditions. Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, old line modernism, the new modernism, even evangelical. And this brings this conclusion of Shafers article and his point here about control. He says if evangelicals are prepared to stay in their denominations, to stay in the ecumenical movement, and keep quiet, then everything will be fine. And he says that is exactly what the church is, what the ecumenical movement wants the evangelical Christian to do. To simply stay inside, to see himself as part of now this immensely broad Christian movement, to stay inside and keep quiet. But Shafers challenges evangelicals with two challenges, and this is how his article ends. He says if we are going to be faithful to God's word and to the demand of God's word that we stand for the truth, we only really have two options. The one is that evangelicals in here he's challenging people in 1948 should stay in the denominations, which are now dominated perhaps by modernism or the new modernism. They should stay in but they must teach clearly what God's word says and try to practice through discipline that Bible believing Christianity is the only true Christianity, that that is the one option for the evangelical. If he's going to stay in a denomination which now has a lot of modernistic or the new modernism teaching in it, but he must not only present the truth but try to confuse those who contradict it as Paul requires of every elder in his letter to Titus. And that that will mean a conviction, a commitment to try to discipline those who deny the faith, who reject the central truths of biblical Christianity. And he says if that is impossible and he suggests that if people actually try to do this, if evangelicals try to stand up for the truth and to discipline those who stand against it, that life will be made impossible for them when he says the only alternative will be what he calls separation in reverse, that is that evangelicals will have to leave. And that's how he finishes the article page 42 in these handouts that I've given you. And he says this. When we have tried to bring the modernists to trial his heretics and have failed, or when we realize that such a procedure has become impossible, then Bible believing Christians have only one recourse, practice separation in reverse, fan new denominations and new councils which can be used to preach the gospel unfettered, and which will draw the line clearly by insisting that modernism is a false religion. This is what we have in our separated denominations and in the American Council and God willing, will have in the international council of Bible believing churches. This is the separatist movement. Abraham Kuiper, Spurgeon, the leaders of the free church of Scotland, as well as Luther, Svingley, Calvin and Knox have walked this road before us. So he points out that many people in the past have had to do the same thing that this was basically what happened at the Reformation. That when the church as a whole was dominated by a position which was in opposition to some of the central truths of the gospel, the reformers of the time had no alternative basically but to practice what he calls separation and reverse that is to leave and to fan new churches. And he says we are in just such a day today. This is what we have to do. And he says not to do one of these two things is to agree and practice with the modernist. It is to allow the unbeliever to speak for us and to control us. It is to deny the teaching of the Bible on the need of church purity. It is to say to the world that there are many ways of salvation. It is to deny the holiness of God in our practice. Now that is his challenge and he finishes up by saying we are outside instead of the heretic being outside. However, being outside by God's grace and for his glory here we stand. Of course quoting Luther there at the very end, here we stand we can do no other. His insistence is that the Bible itself demands that we both teach and practice the purity of the church and of course he is thinking about passions like Galatians, 1 John 4, the pastors and the letters to the churches in the early chapters of Revelation, et cetera where there is an insistence on dealing with false doctrine. Later on in his writings and it is apparent in some of his letters he regretted some of what was there in the separatist movement and in some of what he had done himself is he referring to this stand that he makes so clearly in this particular article. We will come to this in more detail later when we look at the spiritual crisis that he went through himself just a few years after this where he re-examined Christianity completely. But it is not really this that he is referring to. Here he is dealing with the fundamental issue of the purity of the church. What he came to regret later and was already beginning to be concerned about by this time and you see it coming out here and there if you look at this article and hear revolutionary Christianity. It is very interesting what he has to say there about the need for consistency in our lives as well as in our words. So that is a theme that is already beginning to appear more and more in his teaching. I think what he regretted later was the mentality there had been among some of those who were separated. The divisions which led to the setting up of faith seminary distinct from Westminster, the two Bible-believing Presbyterian denominations splitting over minor issues, some of the harsh things were said at that time, some of the ugliness and mentality. I think the other thing that he came to regret later was not just that, that there were sometimes an ugly mentality among those who were trying to stand for the truth. I think another thing that he regretted later and saw as being very distressing was the attitude towards those who stayed in the major denominations. But that were dominated by modernism. That rather than just simply challenging them to try to stand for what is true and if at all possible to practice discipline and then to consider leaving, that sometimes that went to a position of refusing to have anything to do with anybody who stayed inside. Do you remember I told the story a few weeks back when he was with David Calhoun at Lausanne in 1972 he wept when he saw on the board this statement of the two groups from the PCA, well the new PCA forming and of people who stayed in who were evangelical in the Southern Presbyterian church, meeting together to pray. And he said we weren't able to do that. Now he's thinking back to the mid 1930s there when there had been a tremendously negative attitude towards people who had stayed inside. And I know there were things that he regretted himself not only about what happened among others but some of the things that he had said at the time. I would say perhaps a third issue or area where he had some regrets later was perhaps the way in which he expressed some of the things he said. You'll see this quite clearly in the next article we look at, the new modernism, neo-orthodoxy in the Bible because some of the language he uses in that article you won't find him using later. He uses language like cheating, dishonesty and so on when he's talking about the new modernism. And you don't find him using that kind of language later. And I think all through this, through this time because he was very much a part, a central part of the separatist movement. But when he, when it began to go really sour, just a few years after this, he began to see that it was having a more and more negative thrust. And already he's talking about that in some of these articles. It's not enough for us to say no, we've got to stand clearly for something. It's not enough to be against things, we've got to stand for the truth and we've got to live the truth consistently. And as you read through these articles I've given to you to read, you'll see how this comes out. He's just referring to it again and again here often at the end of an article, the end of a lecture. He makes it clear that what is central is our own relationship with God, our own obedience to him, and our own standing positively for the truth. Now as the next few years went by, that became a more and more important part of his teaching. And so he began to give whole lectures on the necessity of speaking the truth in love, and that having a negative attitude towards the ecumenical movement, towards the World Council of Churches, towards the American Council of Churches, or the National Council of Churches, whatever it was called, to liberals having a negative attitude, to Catholics having a negative attitude, to communism was not enough, that the American Council of Christian Churches, which was the separatist body and the international Council of Christian Churches, could not have an identity just by being negative, that it had to have a really positive identity. And of course that's always one of the dangers of separatism. And you see it over and over again through church history, but when you stand against something, now it's a real good entrance place for the devil, your whole life and mentality can be defined by being against things. So you spend your whole time hunting for heretics, rather than getting out there and actually doing the task which God has given us to do, which is to live His Word and to teach His Word, understand for something. And over the next few years it became apparent to him that this movement, the separatist movement, which he had very positive desires for, in which many men did began to become more and more negative in its thrust. And so I'm sure later on he certainly regretted the way he'd said some of the things that he did, but I don't think he ever regretted his stand for the purity of the visible church. That's very clear in the church before the watching world, written many years later, that he always remained committed to the need for Christians to belong to churches which were a bit more pure. Now later on he was very very careful not to criticize people who stayed within denominations which were dominated by modernism. He went to England in the late 60s when there was a big division going on in England among different evangelicals. There were those who were with Martin Lloyd Jones, who left the major denominations and formed the independent evangelical church and other separatist churches in the sense that they were churches committed to the purity of biblical doctrine and he pled with Martin Lloyd Jones and other men like that at the time not to be harsh and negative and critical in the mentality towards people like John Stott, who stayed within the Anglican church as committed evangelicals. And he pled with them to carry on treating one another as brothers but they shouldn't be the same kind of unhappy division between those who stayed in and those who left that there was in the 30s and there was among many people still in the 40s. And some of that please fell on death years and certainly English evangelicals had to go through the same kind of struggle so that even today when some friends of mine were in what who were reformed baptists and reformed pastors in the independent evangelical church when they and I were involved together in a conference with Dick Lucas, Arcy Lucas, who's a very fine evangelical Anglican, the rector of St. Helen's Bishop's Gate in the banking district in London when Dick Lucas organized a conference for young preachers through his proclamation trust. And he was really reaching out both to young Anglican evangelicals and to evangelicals in what in England are called the separated brethren, non-Anglican churches, independent evangelicals, baptists, congregationalists and so on, that Dick Lucas organized a conference in which young men from both groups were invited and some friends of mine who were pastors in the reformed baptist church and an independent evangelical church when they were involved with him in organizing that there were articles written against them by others who were kind of radically and rigidly separatist saying you must never do anything with an Anglican evangelical, that these people are in mixed denominations, therefore if you do anything with them, you're contaminated by their involvement. So it's not only enough to separate yourself, yourself from those who are, say, liberal in their theology, but you've got to separate yourself from evangelicals who were involved in denominations where there are liberals, what's called second degree separation. And Shaper took a very strong stand against that later on. And when he went to England in the 60s, that was the issue that he was pleading with them about and don't make the same mistake of not only, he says, right for you to come out, if that's what you feel you're calling his before God and he was completely committed himself to the purity of the visible church, he would never have been a minister in a church which was mixed with liberals and evangelicals together. He really believed biblically and passionately that one ought to be a pastor in a pure church, which made an effort to really be faithful to Scripture and to discipline pastors who weren't. But at the same time he wished to respect the views of those who stayed in and not to judge them harshly, which second degree separation does basically. He says we can have nothing to do with you because you are contaminated yourself by staying in. And he certainly took a position against that. But that was expressed much later. At this time he's beginning to speak about the importance of really living the truth, of standing faithfully for the truth and of being consistent oneself and not being enough to be negative, you've got to be positive too, but you don't have a clear expression yet of what he later came to call speaking the truth with love. Is it possible to have convictions yourself about what you believe is right and not to judge others who come to a different conclusion? It seems to me what shape would have done would appeal to Paul's statement in Romans that everyone has got to be convinced in their own mind and that you may disagree with what somebody else has done. You may even think that they are the weaker brother to make the choice that they have made, but it's not your place to judge them because they have to give an account themselves to God that our calling is to love one another and you can think of in Corinthians where Paul says the same thing that knowledge puffs up and love builds up that are challenges to love one another and to respect one another even if we think somebody's making it a wrong choice. That was the point that he was making so that here you've got somebody let's say like Dick Lucas whose evangelical credentials are absolutely unimpeachable who is reformed in his thinking and in his approach to gospel who has carefully not had anything to do with the hierarchy basically having to conchurch, he just says, well, I don't agree with what we're doing, it's too late to discipline them now we're a minority as evangelicals in this church but I'm just going to carry on and do what I'm sure is right before God and he does and God has curly blessed his commitment to preaching the word very, very faithfully and he is delighted to work together with people who are not Anglican so he has people on his staff who are Presbyterian and Baptist and so on that's unusual but that Schaeffer's response to somebody would like him would be say I couldn't stay in like you are a denomination which is dominated by liberalism and by Anglo-Patholicism because evangelicals are approximately 20% of the Anglican Church makes them by far the largest group of evangelicals in England those within the Anglican Church by far the largest and he said, well, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do what you were doing I feel that God's word challenges me, challenges you too actually to the purest practice the purity of the visible church to either try to discipline those who teach falsehood or to leave if the man replied as Dick Lucas would, well, yes, I understand what you're saying and I agree that in Scripture there is an emphasis on the purity of the visible church but I feel God is calling me to stay in here and to be faithful to him here and to preach his word here without compromise and that is what I feel called to do and Schaeffer's response would be to say, well, you know, I disagree with you but I respect you and you are a brother in the Lord and we will pray together and we will work together and we will have fellowship together now whether he could have said that at this time, I don't know but it comes out much clearly at a later point I think as you read through these articles, you'll see he's moving towards that in the sense of seeing the need for a consistency of life and doctrine and not just negative statements about other people but it gradually works itself out over the next five years where he begins to re-examine the whole separatist movement when he sees some of the ugliness in it as somewhere I've got a list of them all that actually joined it it wasn't nebulous at all and it became a quite organized group of churches that would meet representatives on them, would meet regularly here in the states because it became first the American Council of Christian churches it was formed first of all here in the states Karl McIntyre was one of its leaders of course as he was in the Bible Presbyterian Church but there were many other men involved in its leadership from the Presbyterian Church as well, Schaefer would have been one of them though he was a younger man obviously at this time he was early on one of its leaders and speakers but there were quite a lot of denominations there were several conservative Baptist denominations conservative Methodists and so on but somewhere I've got the list of churches which are joined together after Schaefer's trip to Europe in 1947 many of these European passes that he visited then led their churches and their denominations into the international council of Christian churches so there were people in Sweden and people in Switzerland and people in Holland for example who became part of the international council of Christian churches which was sort of set up as an evangelical body standing over against the World Council of Churches but in Schaefer's mind from the beginning it was never there just as a negative thing it wasn't just well the World Council of Churches is a large body which has a lot of liberalism in it and so on therefore we need something else and so we'll have something else which is started if you like basically with a negative thrust however Schaefer's own mentality if you read there's a lot of papers called the need of the present time in Europe the need of Europe and in that he says that he's a challenge to American Christians and he says there are three needs in Europe at the present time the one is material there are people in tremendous poverty without enough food to build their life together again after the war and he appealed to American evangelical Christians to really give financially to help that reconstruction of people's lives in Europe he said the second need is the political need one can think about it in the way I heard somebody from Poland last week saying on the radio for us it's going to be either the Marshall Plan or Marshall Law again no either you help us appealing to the United States get our act together here or we're going to be under Marshall Law again if we don't get any help from that side because we simply don't have the resources and this is what one of the leaders of Poland was saying after their free elections recently and that's what the situation Europe was in after the second world war it really needed help and so he said we need political help in Europe from the United States and he really challenged people when he came back to America to see that America really was giving aid for the reestablishment of both of the economies of the democracies in Europe because there was a time when there were quite a few European countries that could easily have become communist like the whole of Eastern Europe did as the Soviet Union took control over it and he saw the third plan is the third need is being a spiritual need and that spiritual need is having two parts first the need for the widespread proclamation of the gospel because you could already see at that point how few Christians there were in Western Europe how weak the evangelical church was and how all pervasive modernism was and the devastating effects it had on the church so he said there was a need for missionaries there's a need to preach the gospel but he said there's also a need for unity to get these separated and scattered groups together both churches and various evangelical mission bodies and other para-church organizations in Europe to encourage them to get together to support each other and we will be happy to work with them and support them from the American Council of Christian Churches in the United States so his commitment to the International Council of Christian Churches simply we need a body over against the WCC and if you like a negative purpose which perhaps may have been the purpose of some of the others involved it certainly seems that when you read some of the literature but his purpose from the very beginning because he was the one who encouraged many of these men in Europe to become part of it was a really positive one but you know as a united body of evangelicals here let's really stand together let's pray for one another let's support each other let's encourage one another let's help one another and if we do this is only pleasing to God and up building to a soul so his purpose was really a positive one and to assist the proclamation of the gospel in Europe and at the same time he was encouraging you see the starting of children's works all over Europe I mean that's one of the things they then went back to do was to start children for Christ classes all over Europe so that the gospel would be faithfully preached to children rather than them having to hear you know the other stuff that was on offer which wasn't really biblical in Korea we have 25 denominations and they reflect an infection from America the division of the church it's one of the sad commentaries we have to make on church history that we export our divisions to other countries as well as having them at home and that's true from England it's true from the United States that missionaries have done that what is our attitude to be because among some there is a desire for unity and what sort of steps can we practically take towards bringing this about how high a priority should unity have for us again I commend to you shape as little book the church before the watching world which was written much later of course in the late 60-68 something like that it seems to me that there are there are three things we have to work at the first is that all of us are called on a personal and individual level to recognize true believers wherever we meet them, whatever denomination they belong to so that every individual is challenged by God's word and by the Holy Spirit to practice ecumenism first of all on the individual level but let's say as here in the seminary we have people from many different denominations to really respect one another to learn from one another to pray together to fellowship together to encourage one another to do everything that we can together to really recognize that we are brothers in the Lord and the while at the moment we may belong to different denominations when we stand before Christ we will all be one no matter what church we belong to now so that to practice already the reality of the unity in Christ of all true Christians and that's very important and we have no business ever practicing second-degree separation that is separating ourselves from somebody else because even though we recognize that they have genuine faith in Christ and that they are saved that therefore that because they're in a denomination which is not pure we will have nothing to do with them take the extreme case imagine now because they're in the state United States there are many evangelical Christians now in the United States now what is our asked should going to be are we going to say because you are a member of the Roman Catholic Church which has doctrines which are explicitly against central biblical doctrines you can think of the statements of the council of Trent that anybody who says that justification is through faith alone is anathema for example many other statements like that recognize the real presence of Christ physically in the communion bread and wine is anathema and you think of all these other statements and what they have led to in so much Roman Catholicism now I would say first of all we are called by God's word to respect the faith of any Christian we meet no matter what denomination they belong to and to be prepared to fellowship with them to pray together to really encourage one another because people are not saved by the denomination they belong to they are saved through faith in Christ and it's the denial of the gospel to suggest anything else when we stand before Christ he's not going to say what church did you belong to that's not going to be its first question it's a question of do you trust in me and that is that is the gospel and this is very important that's the first level we may say of true ecumenism the practice of fellowship among all true believers so that while we recognize that we may disagree on all sorts of issues that we have a commitment to the same gospel at the heart now at the second level I would say there ought to be a preparedness for groups of Christians at the local level and churches to start working together so that we can join together let's say in an evangelistic crusade or whatever it may happen to be or that we have groups of ministers from a local area from different denominations who meet together to encourage one another to support one another and pray together I was involved in Britain for example of ministers that were met regularly I was a Presbyterian pastor there were Anglican evangelical pastors there were reformed Baptist pastors there were independent evangelical pastors and so on and we would meet together regularly and read papers to each other and encourage one another and really support one another in every way that we could and that seems to me as tremendous important too that we make an attempt to practice the unity of the church we know in a situation like that but I'm not I'm not there to convince my Baptist friend to become a Presbyterian I respect his Baptist convictions and commitment I respect that in the fact that in his church it is required for members of his church to be baptized by immersion I may not agree with it but I respect it because here is a brother in the Lord who is faithfully serving God in his situation and I am happy to do all sorts of things together with him that brings us then to the third level which is the level of actually joining churches together in a formal union now wherever possible I think our challenges to do that Christ himself prayed in his high priestly prayer in John 17 this church would be one and where there are divisions between churches which can be dealt with which can be set aside we ought to work at that for example in our own situation here several of the Bible believing Presbyterian denominations have rejoined after some of the very sad splits of the 30s several of those denominations have joined together now it is my prayer and my hope that the remaining evangelical Bible believing Presbyterian denominations that there are will join together I can't imagine that it is pleasing to God that we are not so that where we really are shared in our understanding there must be a commitment to church unity wherever we can practice it in a sense of a formal union of a church however I think we have to add a qualifier here that we will recognize we have to recognize that historically there have been divisions between Bible believing Christians which while they are not fundamental to the gospel do make quite a difference in terms of practice and at that point we have to respect one another be prepared to love one another and help one another but recognize we may very well have different denominations until the second coming if we take the issue of baptism for example if a Baptist church or a whole denomination for example is sincerely convinced before God that baptism by immersion is the only valid form of baptism and that it is wrong for the children of believers they will not accept somebody as a member of their church who is not baptized by immersion or who has been baptized as a baby as a child of the covenant and requires them to be baptized again as soon as you have got a church taking a stand like that which we must respect because they are convinced as they understand scripture that this is what is right it will mean that those who believe that it is right but luckily to practice the baptism of our children that baptism by immersion is not necessary but we may baptize by sprinkling by pouring or immersion would be my own position on this that all of these are a valid baptisms before God as soon as you have two different views here you have to accept that you are going to have two separate denominations what is important is then how we treat one another how we love one another how we are prepared to work together that we don't stand there as antagonists hating one another tearing each other's work down criticizing one another whether we really respect and support and encourage one another and there are of course other divisions and the church government divisions in understanding the Lord's Supper let's say between Lutherans and the Reform Church and we recognize that those differences will be there until the second coming now I suppose it would be possible in theory to suggest that we could have one denomination where every individual congregation was allowed its freedom many Presbyterians wouldn't like that well part of the biblical church government is that we have a Presbyterian polity rather than just simply separate churches because basically you've got congregation as a men people have tried things like that at various points in history there was a point during the time of Cromwell in England when there was a lot of diversity among the churches in England some were Presbyterians some were congregational some were more Episcopalian it didn't last very long and sadly one has to say it's something like that is unlikely to last long but in the way I don't think that it matters actually what is more important is really the way we regard one another the way we treat one another with respect we have for one another and the preparedness to do things together both on the individual level and on the church level as pastors as bodies of churches and so on and where we can we work towards formal unity but if we're going to be perfectionist in this area we will never have anything you know we won't have anything if we insist that either we're all one totally or we're just going to give up for them we don't have perfectionism in any area and we'll have to wait till we stand before the Lord when it will become clear it was right and who was wrong about all the issues that divide us at the present time and we'll all find that we made many mistakes at that point and that should warn us now and I think this is the most important thing to have a humility before Christian brothers and sisters so that we say here is what is central this defines the gospel we will hold to this really firmly though these are the things which we regard as important and we will hold them firmly but they are not a basis for judging fellowship and we are prepared to be humbled before our brothers about these issues and be prepared to be corrected so we are always open to correction by the word of God and by fellow believers to me is the most important thing if we are going to walk towards any kind of true ecumenism but certainly many of the divisions particularly in situations where missionaries have gone are unnecessary they often you'll have Presbyterian churches from let's say England, Presbyterian churches and America, reformed churches which are basically Presbyterian from Holland and then they are all there in Australia they are saying their practice is even the same the difference is a primarily cultural some of them have Dutch traditions, some of them have Scottish traditions, some of them have English traditions, some of them have Irish traditions, some of them have American traditions well that's no basis on which to have separate denominations and you know what we have to work towards and pray towards is the joining of those who really share the same faith and the same practice and the view of the church and to seek to overcome those cultural divisions to know that in Christ there is no Dutch and Irishness, Scottish and English and American and Canadian but you know really we ought to be one in the Lord