My wife Pam and I have realized a dream by moving to Zakynthos, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea.
I make no pretense of knowing with any certainty what the life of a missionary or outside the USA pastor is like. That said, I have experienced one very interesting day today, now writing as the sun sets. Interesting, by way of contrast to the expectations of someone who has grown used to the instant gratification provided by Amazon Prime, Grubhub, SpaceX, and the other logistical superstars that are the entrepreneurial grandchildren of the industrial powerhouses of World War Two that outproduced and outperformed all of the other countries involved in the conflict, both Allies and Axis. Make no mistake about it, it was our factories and farms that prevailed from 1941-1945, with 1.7 Americans falling in the European theater for every individual German military fatality. Let me back out of the rabbit trail and return to my day today.
Last night, after the midweek Bible study taught by Pastor Taki Korianitis, I was informed that the plumbing supplies needed at my place needed to be paid for, and Spiros would take me to the hardware store to make the purchase. At nine o'clock, my ride showed up, my friend, Spiros, the happy whistler.
Yes, I rode on the back of his scooter to the hardware store, without a helmet. You should have seen that guy negotiate the bumper-to-bumper snarl of cars, motorcycles, and scooters in the small town of Zakynthos, tucked into the east side of the Ionian Sea Greek island by the same name.
But we arrived safely at the hardware store, like hardware stores used to be like, like hardware stores are supposed to be like.
Spiros took me halfway home and invited me to walk the rest of the way, which was fine. And one of the hardware store guys delivered the three bags of washers, faucets, flex hose, and other items about 10 minutes after I got home. Different experience #1.
A couple of hours later, I received a call from a nice fellow laboring in English because I am a Greek-language incompetent. The new refrigerator and clothes washer purchased five days ago would be delivered in two hours. Great! Because the street we live on is both very narrow and on a hillside, this promised to be an interesting event, especially with the narrow and winding stairway to the floor we live on.
Notice the white car on the left parked against the curb and the curb on the right side. That is how narrow the street is. Now they have to wrestle the refrigerator and washing machine out of the truck and up the stairs. Easier in Greece than in the USA because the appliances are relatively small and comparatively light. But the stairs are something else!
Nice fellows. Very efficient. And they were on their way to other deliveries. Different experience #2.
Now comes the refrigerator setup, which must be left unplugged for several hours for the refrigerant to settle so the compressor isn't damaged during initial startup. That done, the fact that only two electric outlets are available presents a problem. To position the refrigerator where we want it will require an extension cord about six feet long. But that problem cannot be addressed until tomorrow. But we want the refrigerator on tonight. We have been without a refrigerator for almost two weeks! The solution? The refrigerator is in the middle of the small kitchen floor! What else is there to do? The extension cord will wait until tomorrow.
The refrigerator is a Morris. The only Morris brand I recollect in Europe is a now-defunct British automaker. This appliance was built in China. Different experience #3.
Next came the top-loading clothes washer, made by Whirlpool, under license in Slovakia. To get it operational, Pam and I had to borrow a screwdriver to remove a stamped-metal shipping guard, a much more challenging task than I would have predicted. But we did it. Adjusted it for wobble. Plugged it in. And then I did the almost unforgivable! I cross-threaded the water hose! Arg! Now it sits in the bathroom in its assigned space, useless until I can borrow pliers to remove the copper nipple and thread it properly. Different experience #4.
My final experience is the culmination of what has developed over several days. It begins with my CPAP machine, which requires only distilled water. Fine. Distilled water is available only in Greek pharmacies, and then only in plastic bottles designed for intravenous use.
Unless you punch a hole in the plastic, the distilled water is only accessible using a syringe! After several days of trying to open the bottle without success, I resorted to the steak-knife approach and punched a hole in the side, then poured the distilled water into an empty plastic bottle that had contained drinking water (the water here is very hard). From that repurposed drinking water bottle, I will dispense my distilled water as needed to my CPAP. Different experience #5.
Too much information, I know. But I had to express my small realizations to put into words my increased appreciation for those who live outside the USA and deal with the multiplicities of inconvenience that American citizens, on the verge of Elon-supplied robot butlers and maids, never face.
Everything about life and service to God is more challenging outside the USA. All of life is inconvenient, but especially so elsewhere. But God so planned it. Living for Him, serving Him, glorifying Him, seeking to exalt the Savior, and following the leadership of His Spirit requires that choices be made, challenges be responded to, options be evaluated, and acted upon. But we exist to glorify God, Revelation 4.11!
Thus ends my recounting of what was for me an unusual day.
According to GROK, “James C. Humes (full name: James Calhoun Humes) was an American author, presidential speechwriter, professor, and public speaker. Born on October 31, 1934, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Hill School (1952), earned a B.A. from Williams College, and an LL.B. from George Washington University. Early in his career, he served briefly as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (from Lycoming County, 1963 session) and later as executive director of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He became best known as a White House speechwriter, contributing to speeches for five Republican presidents across several administrations:
Dwight D. Eisenhower (initially),
Richard Nixon (notably involved in drafting the Apollo 11 lunar plaque message: ‘Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind,’ alongside others like William Safire and Pat Buchanan),
Gerald Ford,
Ronald Reagan,
George H. W. Bush.
Humes was renowned for his storytelling style in speeches—often incorporating heartfelt, anecdotal ‘soul shakers’—earning him the affectionate nickname ‘Schmaltz King’ among colleagues, though presidents like Nixon valued his approach. He authored over 30–40 books, many focused on history, leadership, public speaking, and quotations from great figures. Popular titles include:
Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers (a widely referenced guide on oratory and charisma),
Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman,
The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill,
Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter: Five Presidents and Other Political Adventures,
Books on Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Benjamin Franklin, and more.
He was one of the last living Americans to have met Winston Churchill personally and occasionally performed impersonations of him. Later in life, he taught as a professor of language and leadership at the University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State University Pueblo), served as a U.S. State Department lecturer abroad, and advised corporations like IBM and DuPont on communications. James C. Humes passed away on August 21, 2020, in Philadelphia at age 85, due to a heart infection.”
I provided the GROK biography of James Humes because he was a rare combination of brilliant writer, captivating speaker, and gifted teacher, having written thoroughly readable and informative books that you preachers and teachers should read, sadly having died so you can no longer hear him deliver in person to an audience, and who but a master teacher can succeed with the challenge of teaching five presidents how to deliver speeches more effectively?
Since most pastors, sadly, do not read much (much less write), give little attention to the improvement of their communication’s skills (as evidenced by their white ties, red or black ‘dress’ shirts, or blue jeans and untucked shirts on the platform), and are hardly teachable except about manipulative techniques to increase Church attendance, I desire only to drop an easy-to-master practice I learned from James C. Humes that improves every audience’s willingness to listen to a preacher or teacher. What communicator doesn’t want to improve the audience’s attentiveness?
Some speakers are astonishingly effective in the face of adverse circumstances. Imagine early feminist Susan B. Anthony standing before a theater full of United States Senators and Congressmen who had no desire to hear anything the petite woman activist had to say. Or imagine Adolf Hitler about to address more than a hundred thousand rabid Nazi fanatics who were mad as hatters with their cheering and arrogance.
However, both Anthony and Hitler, and most truly skilled speakers and preachers, had discovered a principle Humes wrote about at length, the benefit of attention that is surrendered to the speaker rather than demanded. You have likely been in situations where you are expected to speak, to teach, or to preach, but the audience is for some reason distracted, excited, or inattentive for some reason. What is to be done? Most who find themselves standing before their audience are guilty of impatience and call for their listener’s attention. But the fact is, you are given less of someone’s attention when it is called for, when it is commanded and demanded, than when it is voluntarily surrendered.
Humes writes of Susan B. Anthony, a tiny woman, standing before the seated politicians with their cigars, cigarettes, and pipes filling the room with smoke as they chatted with each other. She could not have commanded or demanded their attended, not those men and not at that time in our nation’s history. She wisely stood in front of them motionless, and silent. Seconds passed with nothing happening. Then, slowly at first, but gathering momentum, those powerful, influential, important men surrendered their attention to her. And only when she had their attention, their undivided attention, she seized the moment and delivered her well-prepared speech.
Next, we have Hitler. Humes wrote about him, but there is also the video record of his infamous speech in Nuremberg. Say what you want about the little Austrian corporal. Evil. Wicked. Mean. Nasty. All true. But he was a genius communicator, a brilliant orator. No informed person will deny that.
So, what did he do with more than a hundred thousand followers whose attention he could have summoned in an instant? Genius in that he was as a speaker, he chose the surrender of his audience’s attention as preferable to demanding their attention. How did he secure the surrender of their attention to him? The same way Susan B. Anthony did. He stood before the frothing, excited, agitated multitudes without saying or doing anything. Normal posture, natural expression, and silence. His silence did not command their attention, but requested it.
It was the first session of a Bible college course I had been asked to teach to first year students. I had been assigned a course text written by a geeky university professor whose appearance was unserious and could not have conveyed that he was serious about his topic of expertise. So, I handed out reading assignments in the course text, but throughout the course I heavily depended on James Humes’ books, the man who made a living speaking, and teaching five presidents how to speak more effectively, with clarity and gravitas.
The best lesson I learned from Humes and put into practice in my preaching and teaching ministry? What I have observed ever since with extraordinary politicians delivering exceptional speeches? What you will invariably notice with an effective Ted Talk speaker? What adds immediate seriousness to a speaker they have never heard before? What they will come to expect as evidence of gravitas from someone declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ? The power pause.
The impact of the power pause is subtle but real. It is the mechanism a skilled and serious speaker uses to provide his audience with the opportunity to surrender their attention to him rather than unwisely presuming he will get their full attention by demanding it or commanding it. And the benefit grows over time, there is a learning process. The audience, the crowd, the class, will gradually respond more and more quickly to your silence before speaking. It really is, as Hume properly identified it, a power pause.
If you do not already make use of the power pause, I encourage you to do so the next time you are in front of people, and every time thereafter, unless you are a comedian or in some other way unserious, since the power pause would then be deceitful. Think of the power pause as a sincere request to your audience before speaking to them about matters of real importance, matters of eternal consequence.
Just. Stand. There. Until. Their. Attention. Is. Surrendered. To. You.
What seventy-five-year-old retired preacher writes about the woman who babysat him for three years, beginning when he was only weeks old and newly arrived in Cherry Creek, South Dakota, from Wheeler County, Texas? That would be me, filled with profound gratitude on these days after she would have celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday had she not been promoted to glory a couple of years ago.
Four men served in the United States military during World War Two, married after the war, and obtained college degrees using the G. I. Bill. Having graduated along with so many other veterans, they found job opportunities scarce and so, left the great state of Texas to begin their careers in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, on a remote Indian reservation in a very isolated region of South Dakota.
My dad and my mom were one of the four couples, with my mom having been the first of the four wives to deliver a child, me. We three were also the last of the four government employee families to arrive. When we arrived, my babysitter approached my mom and said, “Iris, whenever you need a babysitter, I will take care of that boy for you!” My mom took her up on the offer, and for almost three years, she was the go-to babysitter for yours truly.
Her name was Yvonne Little, married to Joe Bill Little. Her maiden name was Scott, so her friends in Amarillo, Texas, naturally called her Scottie at Amarillo High School. Whether she was friends with T. Boone Pickens at Amarillo High, being a year or two older, I do not know. But she certainly was a beautiful gal, both as a teen and as an aged woman.
Her husband and my dad both remained in government service throughout their professional lives, with my dad working with different tribes in South Dakota, North Dakota, Florida, and Oregon and her husband operating out of Washington, D. C. It was while we were living in Fort Lauderdale with my dad the superintendent of the Seminole reservations that the Littles visited from D. C., now with a daughter and a son. The year was 1963. I remember their visit with the embarrassment that comes from an adult reflecting on his conduct as a thirteen-year-old some sixty years earlier.
My first encounter with Scottie Little was from 1950 to 1953, when she was married but not yet a mother, and I have no recollection of it. My next encounter with her was at a single dinner at our home in 1963, when she was a wife and mother of two. It was my third and final encounter with her that was life-changing, during the summer of 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma, August 7 to be precise, after she had been widowed by her beloved Joe Bill. Her devoted daughter was on a mission trip with her Church group, so I could not meet Scottie’s soul’s delight in a meaningful way.
Precisely why and exactly how Scottie Little and I connected in a meaningful way after 65 years had elapsed, I do not know, but I am profoundly grateful that God prompted me and granted me success, because what I learned from her overwhelmed me.
About eight years ago, my wife and I drove to the Norman, Oklahoma, senior complex where she lived, her daughter and son-in-law just a couple of miles away. Lively, energetic, with a sparkling personality, I quickly learned my Aunt Scottie (as she was always referred to in our home growing up) was a deeply committed Christian, confirming the impressions she made on me when we chatted on the phone and exchanged emails leading up to our visit.
I was full of questions accompanying our reminiscences of a bleak part of South Dakota, where my dad had made friends with the last survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the last survivor of the terrible slaughter of innocents at Wounded Knee. My overriding question to her was “Why?” Why did she offer to babysit me? And why did she babysit me so faithfully before our families parted ways through promotions and transfers?
She looked at me with that captivating smile of hers and said, “Steve, I knew that I would give you what your mother would never give you. I prayed for you. I read the Bible to you. I sang Christian songs to you.” My name is John Stephen Waldrip, named after my grandfather, John Conner. However, until I started school, I was always Steve.
What she said was true, insightful, and perceptive. I loved my mother, but she never prayed with me, and I presume she never prayed for me. I loved my mom, but I have no memory of her reading God’s Word to me. I loved my mom, but she never in my hearing sang anything, much less a Christian song or hymn. Yvonne ‘Scottie’ Little is the only woman known to me who ever prayed for me, read God’s Word to me, and sang Christian hymns to me.
It was in 1956, on the Fort Totten reservation in North Dakota, that God began to answer Aunt Scottie’s prayers for me, when Miss Peabody and Miss supp presented the Gospel to a Vacation Bible School group explaining John 1.29, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Eighteen years later, the Spirit of God brought that verse home to me the night I turned to Christ.
So, you see, a godly wife and eventual mother, living in what most of us would describe as the middle of nowhere, may very well have been the most impactful woman in my life. And a few days ago, if she were still here with us, she would have celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday.
But she is not here. She is with the Savior. I know her daughter misses her mother terribly. I certainly miss her.
The takeaway? Anyone can, at anytime, anywhere, engage in a God-honoring and Christ-exalting relationship with someone. With my Aunt Scottie, it was a babysitting ministry with a high-strung, rambunctious little boy who grew up to know Christ, to then spend a half-century in the Gospel ministry, and who is now, after retiring from the pastorate, with my wife on the island of Zakynthos, in Greece, engaged in a faith ministry.
Of course, I am grateful to God, from Whom all blessings flow. Of course, I am thrilled to represent the Savior! What right-minded person would not be thrilled to exalt the King of all glory! Of course, I am thankful for the Holy Spirit's leadership and provision.
But I am also grateful for my Aunt Scottie. Humanly speaking, where would I be without her? What she did in seizing an opportunity to be a blessing, anyone can do. But will you? I sincerely hope so. Be someone's Aunt Scottie.
Each
year on this date, two groups of people celebrate. One group celebrates
Halloween, which I think is a despicable and spiritually desensitizing practice
that cultivates a casual attitude toward spiritual conflict, turning it into a
game. At the same time, the other celebration remembers the Protestant
Reformation.
Vastly
oversimplifying an ongoing discontent across Europe and the British Isles, the
Protestant Reformation can be described as igniting when an Augustinian monk
named Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg door, challenging
indulgences, papal authority, and salvation by works.
If
we confine our attention to Western Europe, without having to deal with the
Greek Orthodox movement in Eastern Europe, here is what happened over the
course of two thousand years. I paint a verbal picture using very broad-brush
strokes.
The
Lord Jesus Christ established His Church about 33 A. D. For almost three
centuries, Christianity spread, Churches were established, and the constant
tendency to deviate from doctrinal purity and practice in churches was
addressed. In 312 A. D., Constantine I, Roman Emperor from 306–337, who is
often credited with ending persecution of Christians and legalizing
Christianity in the Roman Empire, was supposedly converted, a pivotal and
debated moment in church history. As a consequence of Constantine’s conversion
and the empire’s changed attitude toward Christianity, overwhelming numbers of
unsaved people flooded into congregations, and the development of Roman
Catholicism, centered around the congregation in Rome, began in earnest.
I
will leave it to you to research church history to trace Catholicism’s changes
over its centuries of degradation into apostasy. Still, I can recommend Loraine
Boettner’s Roman Catholicism as a great place to start.[1] Catholicism
became so debauched that the Protestant Reformation erupted into a
back-to-the-Bible, back-to-the-Gospel movement that swept across Western
Europe, leading to wars and the establishment of a number of Protestant
denominations, such as Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, and Anglicanism.
Since
the Protestant Reformation, several denominations have sprouted, including
Methodists, Nazarenes, Plymouth Brethren, Church of Christ, Pentecostals around
1900, and Charismatics in the early 60s, besides the cults of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, and Mormons.
What
about Baptists? My view agrees with Charles Spurgeon’s in the essentials.
“Charles H. Spurgeon, the famous 19th-century Baptist
preacher, strongly rejected the idea that Baptist churches originated with the
Protestant Reformation ... Instead, he advocated a ‘spiritual succession’ or
‘Landmark Baptist’ view, arguing that true Baptist principles—particularly
believer’s baptism by immersion and local church autonomy—have existed in every
age since the time of Christ, even if not always under the name ‘Baptist.’
Key Spurgeon Quote (from his sermon ‘The Perpetual Standing of
the Church,’ 1862): ‘We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We
did not commence our existence at the Reformation, we were reformers before
Luther or Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were
never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves.’ Another
direct statement (from a lecture on Baptist history): ‘The Baptist Church has
existed in all ages of the world, under different names, but always holding the
same principles.’
Context of His View: Spurgeon traced Baptist distinctives
(especially credobaptism) back to New Testament churches. He pointed to groups
like the Waldenses, Paulicians, Donatists, and other pre-Reformation separatist
movements as evidence of a continuous ‘trail of blood’ (a phrase later
popularized by J. M. Carroll). He dismissed pedobaptist (infant baptism)
denominations as departing from apostolic practice ...
Summary: Spurgeon taught that Baptist churches did not begin at
the Reformation but have existed in principle since the apostles, preserved
through a spiritual succession of Bible-believing, immersion-practicing
congregations in every era.[2]
My
understanding of history, then, is that the first three centuries of the
Christian era were centuries of beliefs and practices of Baptist Churches. When
Constantine came on the scene, an unknown number of Baptist congregations were
destroyed with an influx of unconverted members (I greatly oversimplify). Then,
in 1517, Martin Luther led a movement that voiced loyalty to God’s Word and a
commitment to the rediscovered (among the Protestants) doctrine of
justification by faith.
But
they were Protestants, meaning they protested against the Roman Catholicism
they had separated from. That said, their departure from the Church of Rome was
not so clean. Without seeing every issue clearly, great and godly as so many of
them were, the Protestants who departed Rome were nevertheless loaded with
baggage from the Church of Rome.
The following are a few of the numerous topics, of varying significance, that distinguish Roman Catholics from Protestants and Baptists.
First, THE FOUNDING OF THE MOVEMENTS
Though
the Roman Catholic Church claims a first-century founding, history, beliefs,
and practices reveal the Church of Rome to be the offspring of Constantine’s
so-called conversion to Christ and the flooding of the Churches with unsaved
Romans.
As
for Protestants, no one claims that Protestantism originated earlier than the
16th century.
As for Baptists, though not all Baptists claim an ancient heritage, I am in accord with Charles Spurgeon and Dr. Paige Patterson, former president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in maintaining a first-century origin for Baptists.
Next, THE POLITICAL POSTURE OF THE MOVEMENTS
For
three centuries, Christians had a relationship with governments that recognized
Rome’s role in Christ’s crucifixion and the Savior’s declaration that “my
kingdom is not of this world.” However, when Rome’s emperor claimed he was a
Christian, the separation of Church and state so prized in our country ended so
far as Roman Catholicism was concerned.
When
the Protestant Reformation began, Protestantism as a movement fully embraced
the union of church and state, with Anglicanism being the Church of England,
Presbyterianism being the Church of Scotland, the Reformed Church and
government of Geneva being one, and Lutheranism being the state Church of
Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and so on. In our colonies before the
American Revolution, each colony had a state church, be it Presbyterian,
Congregationalist, or Episcopalian (the American version of the Church of
England).
What
about the present consideration? Consider the COVID-19 lockdown. Though some
Protestant congregations resumed worship services after acceding to Governor
Newsome’s lockdown order during the COVID crisis, the only congregations I know
of that never interrupted their worship services in California,
steadfastly refusing to comply with the government’s directive, were Baptist
Churches (but, sadly, not all the so-called Baptists).
Baptists
have never been state churches, even though the offer was once made and
refused. And those Baptist congregations that chose to comply with California Governor
Newsom’s illegal and medically unwarranted lockdown order.
It should also be noted that Baptist congregations have never been governed by an authoritative denominational hierarchy but have steadfastly maintained local congregational autonomy. Protestants, while never submitting to the type of control Roman Catholicism has over their subjects, are influenced to a degree quite foreign to Baptists throughout history.
Third, THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSTURE OF THE MOVEMENTS
Rome’s
attitude has always been that if you live in a place that it controls,
you are required to be a Catholic. So, in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, Germany,
the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, until the Protestant Reformation. And
you recall the Pope dividing South America between the Spaniards and
Portuguese.
Did
you know Protestants did the same thing? Before the American Revolution, New
England was divided between Presbyterian and Congregationalist territories. Such
practices are related to their failure to embrace the separation of church and
state, as do the Baptists.
Baptists have always ignored geographical considerations and have spread wherever the lost are located, regardless of any geographic or political situation.
Fourth, THE ANTI PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY POSTURE OF THE MOVEMENTS
It
is one thing to raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, on
one hand, and to decide for them without their knowledge or approval what their
future spiritual obligations will be. One’s relationship with God, with Christ,
and with your Church is supposed to be a matter of conviction, consideration,
and personal commitment rather than any decision your parents have made in
place of your free moral agency. But Rome denies that to infants when they are
christened without their permission or awareness, wrongly persuading youngsters
that they have thereby been spiritually blessed when no such thing has
happened.
Protestantism
has, until the last century or so, done the same thing with its commitment to pedobaptism.
I wonder how many Protestant kids have grown up thinking their spiritual
concerns had already been addressed, only to learn moments after their death
that they were still damned?
Though we have many flaws, Baptists are not guilty of that offense. We embrace the notion that baptism is for believers only, that it is by immersion only, and that one becomes a Church member voluntarily.
Fifth, THE ANTI MEMBERSHIP POSTURE OF THE MOVEMENTS
How
important is church membership when you have no say in the membership matter,
and when nothing you say or do affects your membership? Is it not that way with
Catholics, who can commit adultery, promote and obtain abortions, identify as
Lesbians or homosexuals, and who knows what else, without it in any significant
way impacting your church membership?
Is
it not the same with Protestants, with millions of members in their churches
who might never have attended a single service after their christening, and who
immerse themselves in all sorts of sins without any membership consequences? On
top of that membership neglect, some Protestants ignore church membership
altogether. To them, I would recommend Peter Masters’ wonderful Church
Membership In The Bible.[3] Is
membership important? Membership faithfulness in a rightly constituted New
Testament Church of Jesus Christ is the Lord’s basis for rewards at the
Judgment Seat of Christ.[4]
Baptists
only voluntarily welcome members into a congregation. And even though so many
Baptist congregations do not dutifully practice church discipline as they
ought, some do. I have never been made aware of a Protestant congregation
exercising discipline over a member.
Let
me conclude by being very clear about the Protestant Reformation. I am
convinced it was an excellent work of God that resulted in many coming to
Christ, where the Gospel was clearly proclaimed. I sadly acknowledge that many
Baptist brethren utterly deny that God had anything to do with the
Reformation. However, I am persuaded they are tragically mistaken.
When
Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and Greek manuscripts were
transported into Europe, well-trained men who had never seen a Bible had access
to God’s Word for the first time. Over the next half-century, they studied
Scripture, and their lives were transformed.
Justification
by faith in Christ, plus nothing and minus nothing, was reclaimed by Martin
Luther and other Reformers, and praise God for that. That they carried the
spiritual baggage of numerous unbiblical practices into their new life in
Christ, however, is not to be denied.
I
have mentioned several features of Romanism, Protestantism, and the Baptists. I
have not mentioned the Gospel, not found anywhere in Romanism, found but
sometimes seriously skewed in Protestantism, and seriously compromised in too
many Baptist congregations.
Let
us celebrate the Protestant Reformation, a celebration that Baptists can
embrace while not being Protestants.
Here is the YouTube link of my message from the evening of October 31, 2025.
[1]
Loraine Boettner, Roman Catholicism, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey:
The Presbyterian And Reformed Publishing Company, 1962)
[2] https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1984368187119714328
[3] Peter Masters, Church Membership In The Bible,
(London: The Wakeman Trust, 2008).
[4] John S. Waldrip, The Church of Jesus Christ: 28
Truths Every Christian Ought To Learn, (Monrovia, CA: Classical Baptist
Press, 2019), page 339-347.
