"Easy Baptists" Are Insulting Old Fashioned Christianity!
When I look at the bloody history of the Baptist, I can only remember the profound truth that the Church of Jesus Christ was watered by the blood of the saints. The more the persecution, the more Christianity grew boldly along with the spilled blood of the martyrs. When I started to read the Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the more I see how the Baptist history was not a glamorous one but a bloody one. Before the Reformation, the Baptist group of Christians would go down, give the Scripture and they would risk their necks even if it meant death by the Roman Catholic institution or other similar opposition.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon has a tough as nails expository preacher. He was a great man of God, a Reformed Baptist who was not afraid to call sin as sin. He was serious about true conversion and false conversion. He was an infamous opponent to Arminians and Antinomians who had put him in a rock and a hard place situation. He had proclaimed not an easy Gospel but the Gospel as it should be promoted. He would never give anybody who claimed to be saved but was living otherwise to be saved, instead he challenged their salvation. He was London's greatest preacher of his lifetime. Many have called him the prince of preachers that even non-Calvinist Baptists (no, they are not Arminians because they still believe that salvation cannot be lost) still admire him and agree with the perseverance of the saints.
Today, I am ashamed to think how many people are members of a Baptist church but they are not saved or there are Baptist churches that have deviated from the legacy of Baptists in the past. Many carry the name Baptist but they are not saved. I remembered how Pastor Paul David Washer a Southern Baptist preacher had pointed out what is wrong with a lot of today's Baptist churches. Many people say a simple prayer but they do not know the Jesus who they are asking to save them. They have not repented of their sinfulness. They have only followed a said formula and later, they live a life showing they were never truly saved to begin with. I call this heresy as the Easy Baptist heresy. That is, they have a very poor understanding of eternal security.
Eternal security is not just once saved, always saved then you can live the way you want. If you are to think of it, eternal security is another name for the perseverance of the saints. Now a non-Calvinist's version of perseverance of the saints that while it does not believe in unconditional election, limited atonement and irresistible grace, it certainly believes that true believers though they may fall away, cannot fall away completely. 1 John 2:19 cannot be clearer that the true saints of God will not completely depart from the assembly. Those who had fallen away completely were never saved to start with. Sad to say but the Easy Baptist tends to declare anybody saved even if the person has never shown evidences of having encountered God's holiness.
An Easy Baptist can say, "Why are you so obsessed with the fruits of those who profess to be saved? As long as they believe, they are saved even if they are not living the way they should, salvation is by grace alone right? Oh wow, you are a Pharisee and a Jesuit! You never left Catholicism because you still believe that good works are needed to validate one's conversion is genuine." All I can say is that such a person had actually perverted the grace of God for lasciviousness (Jude 1:4). Such a person does not realize that I am obsessed with the fruits of people is because, I love seeing God's grace work in others. If he really read 1 Corinthians 6:11, Titus 2:11-14 and Ephesians 2:10 (which some of them say they read it then they later conveniently dismiss it), one can realize that God's salvation changes the lives of people.
When I ask for an old fashioned revival in Jeremiah 6:16 which commands people to seek ye the old paths and people would not. The Easy Baptist can be a victim of modernism with how they are. I just heard them that they believe that a person can be saved and still remain as rotten as before without any change. They can go ahead and call me demonic, Jesuit, Pharisee, etc. or all the false accusations they can imagine but I know myself better. It puts me so much in a rock and a hard place to be caught in between rival heretics. If Arminians can accuse me of teaching a license to sin, their bitter opposites the Antinomians can accuse me of teaching salvation by works... both are just as lost as each other. Both Arminians and Antinomians are on their road to Hellfire.
The late great Spurgeon once said, "If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Saviour, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel, insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness." I could imagine if Spurgeon were alive today, if he were to do his pose of pointing towards the Bible, if he were to speak to Easy Baptists, they would want him out. The Easy Baptists would hate him as much as the Roman Catholics would hate him.
I would actually raise up the issue of the great Protestant preacher the late Pastor Billy Sunday. He was that great Presbyterian who preached in Chicago a city of sin. Why did Frank Sinatra an unsaved man hate him so much? Pastor Sunday would not compromise with sin. When people were getting saved, did the saloons get a fill? Absolutely not at all! It had the Spurgeon effect - he would have rebuked anyone who claimed to be a Christian and went drinking to be a false convert. Although he was not a Calvinist but he showed several signs he was truly a man of God. When I think of his crusades, Sunday was never a man to compromise with sin. He was so well-hated because of his old fashioned preaching. The Easy Baptists would have just declared alcoholics as saved even if they remained as rotten as before.
Whether you like it our not but Easy Baptists are apostates and false converts. Now some people may have gotten saved by an Easy Baptist soulwinning repeat after me, but they are bound to leave that assembly when the Holy Spirit convicts them. An Easy Baptist assembly might take in the place of a church that welcomes false converts. When I think of that bloody incident of a man who professed to be a Christian and committed such a horrible crime of murdering people left and right, he showed no signs of being born again and then he committed suicide, I have no reason to believe that man was ever my brother in Christ. They might say, "Hey you teach works salvation." but I offer no apology because if that man was truly saved, he would have not fallen away that badly. Peter did deny he was a Christian but he wept bitterly. That man only showed by his life that he was like Judas Iscariot, a fruitless branch and a bad tree that had to be thrown away as much as the person who trusts in his or her works to get into Heaven.
If you think of false converts vs. true converts, there is a distinction that will reveal itself. Now, I am not saying true converts are sinless, they are imperfect but they have a different attitude towards sin. I have met some true converts who had some issues of having severely backslid but they did not revel in their sin, instead, they had Paul's fretting found in Romans 7. Meanwhile, the Easy Baptists as false converts show signs of consistently falling away instead of falling away and rising up again, falling away then rising up until they reach the finished line. Philippians 1:6 is clear that when God has begun a good work in you, He is bound to finish it. A true believer may fall down but they do not apostatize. They will still produce good works because God is working in them. So tell me then, how is it possible that when God works in a believer, no works happen? It's just absurd to imagine how somebody can get saved and not even get a bit of a change.
Worse, Easy Baptists might be one of the best grounds to accept the ecumenical movement. The Jesuits have their agents to infiltrate various groups to become part of Rome. What a better, riper field than an Easy Baptist Church. Since such people are not saved, it would be very easy to use Jesuit psychology to entice such people that the Roman Catholic institution is Christian, that they are born again. Any truly saved Christian won't buy the trash that the Roman Catholic institution is Christian even if they might get into an unequal yoke with a Roman Catholic. The effects may not be immediate but sooner or later, it will take place. If you don't believe me, you might as well observe how Rick Warren himself is openly allied with the Jesuits themselves and how the Roman Catholic priest (Jesuit or not) praises his works as non-offensive.
See also:
Charles Haddon Spurgeon has a tough as nails expository preacher. He was a great man of God, a Reformed Baptist who was not afraid to call sin as sin. He was serious about true conversion and false conversion. He was an infamous opponent to Arminians and Antinomians who had put him in a rock and a hard place situation. He had proclaimed not an easy Gospel but the Gospel as it should be promoted. He would never give anybody who claimed to be saved but was living otherwise to be saved, instead he challenged their salvation. He was London's greatest preacher of his lifetime. Many have called him the prince of preachers that even non-Calvinist Baptists (no, they are not Arminians because they still believe that salvation cannot be lost) still admire him and agree with the perseverance of the saints.
Today, I am ashamed to think how many people are members of a Baptist church but they are not saved or there are Baptist churches that have deviated from the legacy of Baptists in the past. Many carry the name Baptist but they are not saved. I remembered how Pastor Paul David Washer a Southern Baptist preacher had pointed out what is wrong with a lot of today's Baptist churches. Many people say a simple prayer but they do not know the Jesus who they are asking to save them. They have not repented of their sinfulness. They have only followed a said formula and later, they live a life showing they were never truly saved to begin with. I call this heresy as the Easy Baptist heresy. That is, they have a very poor understanding of eternal security.
Eternal security is not just once saved, always saved then you can live the way you want. If you are to think of it, eternal security is another name for the perseverance of the saints. Now a non-Calvinist's version of perseverance of the saints that while it does not believe in unconditional election, limited atonement and irresistible grace, it certainly believes that true believers though they may fall away, cannot fall away completely. 1 John 2:19 cannot be clearer that the true saints of God will not completely depart from the assembly. Those who had fallen away completely were never saved to start with. Sad to say but the Easy Baptist tends to declare anybody saved even if the person has never shown evidences of having encountered God's holiness.
An Easy Baptist can say, "Why are you so obsessed with the fruits of those who profess to be saved? As long as they believe, they are saved even if they are not living the way they should, salvation is by grace alone right? Oh wow, you are a Pharisee and a Jesuit! You never left Catholicism because you still believe that good works are needed to validate one's conversion is genuine." All I can say is that such a person had actually perverted the grace of God for lasciviousness (Jude 1:4). Such a person does not realize that I am obsessed with the fruits of people is because, I love seeing God's grace work in others. If he really read 1 Corinthians 6:11, Titus 2:11-14 and Ephesians 2:10 (which some of them say they read it then they later conveniently dismiss it), one can realize that God's salvation changes the lives of people.
When I ask for an old fashioned revival in Jeremiah 6:16 which commands people to seek ye the old paths and people would not. The Easy Baptist can be a victim of modernism with how they are. I just heard them that they believe that a person can be saved and still remain as rotten as before without any change. They can go ahead and call me demonic, Jesuit, Pharisee, etc. or all the false accusations they can imagine but I know myself better. It puts me so much in a rock and a hard place to be caught in between rival heretics. If Arminians can accuse me of teaching a license to sin, their bitter opposites the Antinomians can accuse me of teaching salvation by works... both are just as lost as each other. Both Arminians and Antinomians are on their road to Hellfire.
The late great Spurgeon once said, "If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Saviour, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel, insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness." I could imagine if Spurgeon were alive today, if he were to do his pose of pointing towards the Bible, if he were to speak to Easy Baptists, they would want him out. The Easy Baptists would hate him as much as the Roman Catholics would hate him.
I would actually raise up the issue of the great Protestant preacher the late Pastor Billy Sunday. He was that great Presbyterian who preached in Chicago a city of sin. Why did Frank Sinatra an unsaved man hate him so much? Pastor Sunday would not compromise with sin. When people were getting saved, did the saloons get a fill? Absolutely not at all! It had the Spurgeon effect - he would have rebuked anyone who claimed to be a Christian and went drinking to be a false convert. Although he was not a Calvinist but he showed several signs he was truly a man of God. When I think of his crusades, Sunday was never a man to compromise with sin. He was so well-hated because of his old fashioned preaching. The Easy Baptists would have just declared alcoholics as saved even if they remained as rotten as before.
Whether you like it our not but Easy Baptists are apostates and false converts. Now some people may have gotten saved by an Easy Baptist soulwinning repeat after me, but they are bound to leave that assembly when the Holy Spirit convicts them. An Easy Baptist assembly might take in the place of a church that welcomes false converts. When I think of that bloody incident of a man who professed to be a Christian and committed such a horrible crime of murdering people left and right, he showed no signs of being born again and then he committed suicide, I have no reason to believe that man was ever my brother in Christ. They might say, "Hey you teach works salvation." but I offer no apology because if that man was truly saved, he would have not fallen away that badly. Peter did deny he was a Christian but he wept bitterly. That man only showed by his life that he was like Judas Iscariot, a fruitless branch and a bad tree that had to be thrown away as much as the person who trusts in his or her works to get into Heaven.
If you think of false converts vs. true converts, there is a distinction that will reveal itself. Now, I am not saying true converts are sinless, they are imperfect but they have a different attitude towards sin. I have met some true converts who had some issues of having severely backslid but they did not revel in their sin, instead, they had Paul's fretting found in Romans 7. Meanwhile, the Easy Baptists as false converts show signs of consistently falling away instead of falling away and rising up again, falling away then rising up until they reach the finished line. Philippians 1:6 is clear that when God has begun a good work in you, He is bound to finish it. A true believer may fall down but they do not apostatize. They will still produce good works because God is working in them. So tell me then, how is it possible that when God works in a believer, no works happen? It's just absurd to imagine how somebody can get saved and not even get a bit of a change.
Worse, Easy Baptists might be one of the best grounds to accept the ecumenical movement. The Jesuits have their agents to infiltrate various groups to become part of Rome. What a better, riper field than an Easy Baptist Church. Since such people are not saved, it would be very easy to use Jesuit psychology to entice such people that the Roman Catholic institution is Christian, that they are born again. Any truly saved Christian won't buy the trash that the Roman Catholic institution is Christian even if they might get into an unequal yoke with a Roman Catholic. The effects may not be immediate but sooner or later, it will take place. If you don't believe me, you might as well observe how Rick Warren himself is openly allied with the Jesuits themselves and how the Roman Catholic priest (Jesuit or not) praises his works as non-offensive.
See also:
- Declare A Spiritual War Against The Heresy Of Teaching The Possibility Of A Fruitless Christianity!
- Declaring War Against Easy Prayerism
- "Easy Christianity" Seeks To Separate Itself From Sound Doctrine!
- It's Not About Church Size, It's About Church Substance!
- The Great Baptist Preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon Will Never Be Popular With The "Easy Christianity" Crowd