Prayer

It’s the most I can do on behalf of others but the battle to remember that is fierce.

When real burdens happen, the flesh always wants to take leadership.

·      What can I do?

·      How can I fix it?

·      Who can I get to help?

Illness, financial trouble, legal issues, spiritual issues, we always want to find our own way out. When it is for someone I love, I am tempted to search every possible resource to solve their problem.

Of course, we want prayer. We wouldn’t be very good Christians if we didn’t want prayer. But we want to pray AND …

·      And money

·      And advice

·      And help

whatever practical thing that really fixes our trouble, we want prayer and that thing.

There are occasions when we understand we are unable to do anything. In these cases, prayer is valued. But even then we have conditioned ourselves to think so little of prayer that we either don’t really pray or don’t really appreciate prayer as we ought.

Oh, how I want to give myself to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

I Prayed for Revival

I read a testimony the other day from a pastor I’ve kept in touch with for more than 20 years. His ministry has been active and useful in the cause of Jesus Christ. His sons all serve the Lord. He has every reason to rejoice. 

His testimony read something like this; “I have prayed for revival for decades now. This week I saw it happen.” He was referring to an event sanctioned by the Southern Baptist Convention. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event held by a camp of believers who have compromised the faith on several fronts. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event organized by a group our independent Baptist forefathers had the insight to come out of. Now their children and grandchildren are working their way back in. I promise the SBC has not gotten better. It’s that current independent Baptists are less discerning. 

Why would a man whose ministry has been so blessed return to where his forefathers left? I believe it can be found in his own testimony that he had been praying for revival for years. He has been looking for what he believed God had not granted him. He could not see the blessings of God in his own ministry. (I am sure he would acknowledge being blessed, but not that he has seen revival.) In some respect, he would have had to view what has been accomplished in his ministry as being less than supernatural, less than revival. 

We have got to get past this. We have got to get over calling HUGE results the work of God and the results of our own ministries as just routine. 

•    Every Sunday service

•    Every sermon

•    Every altar call

is the result of the work of God; supernatural, miraculous - a revival. 

Unless it is not. 

And preacher, only you know if your ministry has been of the flesh and not the Holy Spirit.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

Not a Novice

1 Timothy 3:6 (KJV)

Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.

He is 23 years old. He grew up in church, taught Sunday school, and did various other ministries around the church. Early he met his bride, and they moved to Arizona. There they united with a church and spent some time there. Soon they were on their way to another city and state to plant a church. 

Their website[1]gives little more information about his background than this. No name of the church he grew up in, no reference of any specific training, no mention of an authorizing church other than a vague reference to the church they left before planting this one. 

The website provides a doctrinal statement that is less than a page long. Of the eleven statements listed, two are in error, and one is questionable.

This young man also has a Youtube channel where he posts many of his sermons. Perusing through the message titles, I found several that are likely of questionable doctrine. His position on baptism is that one should not be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but in the name of Jesus only. He claims he is not a modalist, but I don’t believe he really knows what he is.

There is a trend today, perhaps not new but certainly much more evident than any other time since I have been in the ministry, of younger men with contentious natures assuming (or perhaps presuming) the working of the pulpit. 

They are generally bold, arrogant, and rebellious against those who have gone before them. 

They are novices.

Men like Steven Anderson, who has now many years of experience, have become locked in their novice state, refusing to be corrected. It appears that he has inspired a generation of novices who now rebel even against him.

These rebellious novices have a right to believe as they do, preach as they do and really, do as they do. I would not choose to stop them physically. But I do advocate for those who are not novices to warn against them. These young men are caught up in pride and in condemnation. They will hurt many by their vain and deceitful words. We must train up young men who cherish humility, submission, and maturity. 

Only then may we stop the mouths of these foolish novices.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1]I ran into this young man through the Facebook page I run called “Baptist History Faith and Practice." In this case I chose not to disclose the actual site and name of the man because I do not want to promote him in the slightest.

The Evolutionists are Angry at Themselves

I was thinking the other day about how much different the world is today because of the United States of America.

When England surrendered to George Washington, they marched to the surrender playing a tune called, “The World Turned Upside Down.”

The United States really did turn the world upside down.

The entire written history of mankind, prior to the Revolutionary War, was all about the Middle East and Europe.

Within a couple of decades after the Revolutionary War, hugely significant world events highlighted the United States.

Even in things that played out on the other side of the Atlantic, the United States became a key figure in the historical record:

• World War I
• World War II

Russia launched the first man into space in April of 1961

September of 1962 President Kennedy boldly, almost brazenly said, “We choose to go to the moon.”

And we took the historical record of not only being the first, but the only country to do that.

We changed the world.

The victory of the American Revolution came at the cost of the American Indians.

America could not become the superpower that we did without taking the land that the American Indians had occupied for who knows how long.

But that’s not anything different than what had always happened on the other side of the Ocean. European and Middle Eastern countries had always fought one another, trying to dominate over the others. They only reason they had not been successful in obliterating other nations was the balance of power.

Something different happened here.

Originally there were enough Indians to keep a balance of power with the white immigrants.

But then came disease.

Chickenpox, smallpox, measles – illness virtually wiped out whole tribes.[1]

It was natural selection – the survival of the fittest – a concept of the theory of evolution, that defeated the American Indians.

Which is really ironic.

The people who are most angry that white people took this land from the Indians are the ones who most strongly push the concept that led to it.

The evolutionists are the ones complaining about what evolution did!

Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

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[1]These same illnesses, had struck the Middle East and Europe too. Millions of them died at that time. The black plague helped Europe to defeat the Roman Empire. What happened here was not isolated to here.

I Thought About Quitting

I saw a meme[1]with the words, “I thought about quitting but then I saw who was watching.” The picture was a lion looking back at a cub. The verse they had attached was, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”[2]

The meme looked good but it is an error. 

First, this places all responsibility for not quitting on ourselves - He strengthens me to choose to not quit. 

This won’t work. The passage quoted never promises this. 

Second, knowing one’s children, wife, friends, church, are watching can’t keep one from quitting. 

Can anyone of those keep you from dying? No. They may want to. You may wish to live on for their sake, but life is not in our hands. 

The only way to keep from quitting is to trust the One who is watching us. 

The Lord, the same one who holds our life in His hands, is the one who sustains us in the storms of life. 

Keep anchored to him and you will find He is the strength to keep going.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1]The words we use these days. :-o

[2]Philippians 4:13

Why Is Patrick of Ireland So Important?

March 17 is traditionally St Patrick’s Day. As a kid, this quasi-holiday was looked forward to and practiced. We all wanted to wear some green and we all wanted to spot the unsuspecting one who had not adorned in the emerald color so we could give them the playful (and sometimes not so playful) pinch. I suppose most of us knew it to be an Irish tradition but, so far as I knew, no one knew or cared for more information than that.

St Patty’s Day is more than an Irish tradition - it is a Catholic one. 

But then, as a young adult, I became a believer and, in my own pursuit of the church that Jesus built, I came to see that the Baptists are the only Christian people whose faith can be traced outside of Catholicism and back to Jesus Christ. I also learned that Patrick was in fact not a Catholic, nor a Protestant, but a Baptist (in practice - Baptist is not a denomination but a distinct kind of Christianity). 

Every March there appear a number of articles and other materials promoting that Patrick was a Baptist. I saw one article this year by Ken Ham’s organization[1]that promoted that Patrick at least wasn’t a Catholic. 

Someone might ask, “Why is it important?”

Patrick was born in Scotland (some say Wales, on the border of Scotland) in the 4th century. By his own testimony, his father was a deacon and his grandfather a pastor. This is a full 2 centuries before the Catholic Church undertook to evangelize the British Islands and 1200 years before the Protestant Reformation.

His grandfather’s ministry could have easily extended back to the 3rd century. This places Christianity in the British Isles very near to the time of the apostles and supports the claims of Welsh believers that their faith extends back to the apostolic age. 

The significance is this; Baptist’s don’t have to trace an “unbroken chain” through Europe to today. I am convinced that there were Baptists scattered throughout Europe - the Cathari, Paulicians, Waldensians and more. But we don’t have to connect them and find their existence in every place and every century. Patrick is but one evidence that Christianity (remember that Christianity in the U.S. came primarily from the British Isles) has existed in England from the time of the Apostles. 

The world is prone to attack Christianity by shoving in our faces the dark record of the Inquisition, the Crusades and the blotted record of the Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. England had its own religious upheaval under the Catholics and Protestants as each vied for power in the monarchy. But there has, all along, been this band of believers in the British Isles who were never a part of Catholicism, never a part of Protestantism and never a part of this dark history of Christianity, so-called.

Patrick is important because he demonstrates that.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1]Answers in Genesis

A Baptist Or Just A Fundamentalist

Recently I shared a graphic designed to describe the difference between a fundamentalist Christian and a Fundamental Baptist.[1]

Fundamentalism is a historical event. Christians of several denominations agreed together to battle modernism within Christianity by promoting five fundamental doctrines true of those in the several denominations. These fundamentals are basic and vague enough that Christians in a broad range of churches could agree. It seems obvious that, though a Christian agrees with them, they do not define his specific faith. The graphic I shared is meant to describe, in very basic terms, the position of. Fundamental Baptist. Amazingly, I’ve experienced some push back just from sharing this graphic. 

One who responded is a young pastor.

I don’t think I know him personally. The church I pastored supported his dad’s missionary ministry maybe thirty years ago. Perhaps he visited our church back then, I don’t know. This young preacher has released a music recording I enjoy very much. For these reasons, I reached out to him. Shortly after the connection, I had reason to suspect this young preacher has been influenced by Stephen Anderson and I backed off my connection.

He was the first to respond to the graphic. He felt it was important to point out that the Baptist distinctive does not mention either the timing of the rapture or one’s position on Israel. 

The second response was from an elderly pastor, now retired. 

I know this pastor quite well. I used to visit his church whenever he hosted preachers such as Bob Gray, Jack Hyles, and Curtis Hutson. I met with him for several days, years ago. The result of that meeting was a simple philosophy statement I still hold to, “Salvation, Instruction and Hope”. (I also learned to be content in whatever ministry God gives me by observing his lack of contentment.) In the final years of his ministry, he changed his standards and his convictions, making a public statement acknowledging this change through a book he authored.

His response to the graphic was to ask;

·       Is a church that does not use the KJV Baptist?

·       Is a church that doesn’t have a deacon Baptist? and

·       Is a church that does not hold to Baptist perpetuity Baptist?

In response 

I would like to point out that the graphic is meant to be a basic description of Baptist convictions. Obviously, there are differences among each Baptist church. I would also remind readers, and those who would push back, that the first Baptist distinctive is a desire to be biblical. We don’t view Baptist history as our authority. We view the Bible as the authority for our faith. 

Regarding the timing of the rapture, I propose it is suggested in the fundamental of the second coming of Christ. I understand that Protestants are frequently post-millennialists and that some Baptists have been post-tribulationalists. However, I insist that the Bible is pre-tribulational in its timing of the Rapture.

As to the issue of Israel, the nation of Israel today is not where God will one day have them. Christians today are the spiritual seed of Abraham, the true circumcision of this age. Still, God’s Word is clear, God will once again take up His people and there is a blessing on those who support them. 

As for the question about the King James Version, this issue has no place in the discussion unless it is implied in the fundamental of inerrancy. My position is in favor of the KJV but bringing it into this discussion is, with respect to the preacher who brought it up, baiting and argumentative. 

The question of the deacons is simple, it has to do with the difference in polity between the various churches. Baptists have only two offices, pastors and deacons, as opposed to the presbyterian and episcopal polities. The distinctive does not require deacons. It does require no other offices (cardinals, bishops popes, etc) than pastors and deacons. 

Finally, on the question of perpetuity, my senior preacher is clearly baiting an argument. Perpetuity is neither implied nor proposed in the graphic. For my part, perpetuity is fact. Baptists are not, must not be Protestant. To believe that Baptists began in England at about the same time as Congregationalists, Pilgrims, Separatists, Puritans and etc., is tantamount to identifying as Protestant and not Baptist.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1]I suppose there is also a difference between a fundamentalist Baptist and Fundamental Baptist.