Okay, now I hate to bring this up but I will. This has to do with the substance of bg's blog. Now to be sure, I understand the dangers of ecumenicism. I think highly of Billy Graham but I don't think I could ever be wholeheartedly behind all he did etc. etc.
I listened to the testimony of a man by the name of Johnny Lee Clary. He was an imperial wizard in the kkk. He told of his life and how he was raised to hate. He told of his father blowing his brains out right in front of him at 11 years of age. He joined the kkk because they promised to be his family and take care of him.
He also told of later on in life coming under the influence of a black pastor and how he started out hating and threatening the man and how the man just told him "Johnny, Jesus loves you and I love you and there isn't a thing you can do about it." He said, "Johnny, there is not a black heaven and a white heaven. There is not a heaven for pentecostals and a heaven for baptists."
Now, with that being said, I can't help but wonder if a lot of the ifb crowd really thinks (and I think a lot do whether or not they will admit it) that there is a special place in heaven for them because of their separation standards, their refusal to acknowledge the godliness and holiness of others, or their disdain for others who don't see things quite as they do. My personal feeling is that we are a product of 21st century American christianity. When I read bg I just can't help but think if that is how Paul found things in Ephesus. Did people have the same attitudes and separation standards when they had to flee to the catacombs? Is this the way it is right now today in say, Nigeria? Sudan? Saudi Arabia? Iraq? I think that so many of the things we argue and fight about and separate about would be mute if we lived in a different culture and nation.
Has anyone else ever noticed or questioned the fact that a lot of the people who were burned at the stake and persecuted in the middle ages were not ifb? Has anyone ever questioned that some of these people were even catholic? Or even, God forgive me, part of a denomination?
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Now I am probably all wet about this but it seems that Jack Hyles was more of a philosopher and many of his followers such as bg, Allen Domelle, and others, merely rehash what jh said or wrote about and they measure themselves by what jh thought and preached and throw in a few bible verses in for good measure.
I constantly read articles and writings from a lot of these guys that talk about what a great work God is doing through them, how many they had at the altar, how many were saved, how many rededications, etc. and the next article will be about how fundamentalism is dying and how to preserve it. It just seems to me that if God is going to preserve his Word, preserve his church, and preserve the saints then He is going to need something better than the best I can do.
Forgive me for the ramblings of a deranged mind but it is the only one I have!
