"AS I SEE
IT"
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Volume 5, Number 1, January 2002
["As I See It" is a monthly electronic magazine compiled and edited by Doug Kutilek. Its purpose is to address important issues of the day and to draw attention to worthwhile Christian and other literature in order to aid believers in Jesus Christ, especially pastors, missionaries and Bible college and seminary students to more effectively study and teach the Word of God. The editor's perspective is that of an independent Baptist of fundamentalist theological persuasion.
AISI is sent free to all who request it by writing to the editor at: DKUTILEK@juno.com. You can be removed from the mailing list at the same address.
All articles are by the editor (unless otherwise noted) and are copyrighted but may be reproduced for distribution, provided the following conditions are met: 1. articles must be reproduced in unedited, unabridged form; 2. the writer must be properly credited; and, 3. such reproduction must be for free distribution only. Permission to distribute in any other form must be secured in writing beforehand. Permission for reproduction in Christian print periodicals will generally be given.]
A WORD OF EXPLANATION
This issue of "As I See
It" is both delayed and, frankly, inferior in breadth of content to the
standard we set for ourselves. The cause was technological: a couple of weeks
with the computer at first on the fritz, running unspeakably slowly, and then
not running programs at all. This prevented the writing of at least one major
article that we hoped to include in this issue. When we had discovered the cause
of our grief (a greatly over-delayed defragging of the hard drive which took 16
hours to remedy--ultimate cause: Microsoft factory settings) and just as we had
that problem resolved, a long-hidden virus attacked the hard drive and wiped it
clean. While we had many of our most important files saved, we lost many of
lesser import, and endured a great deal of frustration over a week's time trying
to get the system back up, a thing accomplished only late today (January 2).
Anyone in the know about such things could likely have fixed the mess in a
couple of hours-or, more likely, wouldn't have had it happen at all. I plead
both ignorance and gross incompetence in such matters.
I still have to recreate mailing lists (yes, I do have that on a diskette) which
will delay the mailing a few days more, I suspect. And then will follow
re-organizing and reloading files, and discovering what has and hasn't been
permanently lost.
I think I know why I prefer printed books to anything on computer: I've never
had a book get infected with a virus, or suddenly lose all its text.
---Doug Kutilek
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THE YEAR IN RETROSPECT
As one year wanes and a new one
waxes, I find it of substantial advantage to myself to examine the
achievements--and failures--of the old year, and to tentatively chart my course
for the coming year.
In our family, our younger daughter Sarah got engaged in July to a
preacher-in-training and was married in December. Three down, one to go. Our
younger son, Matthew, graduated with honors from the Citadel in May and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U. S. Marine Corps; he got engaged in
August (at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. in the evening), with a
July, 2002 date set for the wedding. The rest of us in the family just continued
on pretty much as before, with no major milestones.
As regards the work of the ministry, I continued with my commuting to Eastern
Europe, though I was able to make only two trips (a planned Spring trip did not
materialize due to several causes), totaling six full weeks and encompassing
Romania, Serbia, and Hungary, though I did preach or teach 29 times in those 42
days, and also taught three three-day Bible seminars. On one trip, some 30 young
people were converted at the annual summer youth camp in southern Romania which
it has been my privilege to participate in each of the past seven years. Along
with these and other activities, I became involved with ministering in the
Sedgwick County jail through service on a jury in February, and have preached
repeatedly and held small group Bible studies there regularly since the early
summer. I also taught a seminary course in Minnesota in June. In all, I preached
or taught some 120 times, besides the seminar and seminary courses.
Beyond this, I wrote some 150 pages of "As I See It," (saved on
diskette) as well as several hundred letters (most were lost in "the
Crash"). I read 57 books (it would have been a full 60 if I had not had the
computer virus to contend with). My reading this year was of an unusually high
quality, that is, the great majority of the books read were decidedly worth
reading, and was rather diverse, including 12 books on history, 9 religious
biographies, 8 books on Biblical studies, 7 secular biographies, 5 books about
Baptists, 4 on Christian ministry, 2 on leadership, a couple of novels (almost
the first and the last volumes read for the year), plus odds and ends in other
areas. I will say that I find that it is absolutely essential to me that I
continue to set the highest priority on reading, aiming at both quality and
quantity. Much reading of the best sort opens new vistas, challenges old and
often bland thinking, rejuvenates the mind and prevents intellectual stagnation
and that dull staleness that often plagues those who speak publicly a great deal
or who write much for publication. Perhaps some readers are thinking that I need
to read more than I do! At any rate, I know that I need to read much and well,
if I am to be of any use to others via the written or spoken word. There are
many people who can live without books. I am not one of them. I suspect I shall
have to forego golf, fishing and Matlock reruns for yet another year. Such
sacrifice!
And I shall "back up" my files with greater regularity, to say nothing
of keeping my "anti-virus" program regularly up-to-date.
---Doug Kutilek
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BOOK REVIEWS
THE FINAL DAYS by Barbara
Olson. Washington, D. C.: Regnery , 2001. 240 pp., hardback. $27.95
The author Barbara Olson, a noted politically-conservative lawyer and author was
among those who died aboard the hijacked plane flown into the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001. This book was completed just days before those tragic
events.
Olson who previously wrote a highly-acclaimed book about Hillary Clinton, Hell
to Pay, here records "the last, desperate abuses of power by the Clinton
White House," to quote the sub-title. Here, for all to see, with full
documentation is the account of the sordid, tawdry, unseemly acts of America's
Ahab and Jezebel, as they peddled influence, sold pardons (who they pardoned is
just appalling), plundered multiplied thousands of dollars of government
property from the White House and sought to extend their binge beyond January
20, 2001 by establishing by far the most expensive and lavish offices of any
ex-President and any sitting Senator, all at the expense of the hapless
taxpayers. No act was so debased as to be beneath their grasping, greedy,
self-aggrandizing, self-serving behavior.
After--and only after--the first "co-presidents" completed their
desecration of the White House did the willfully blind (or willfully
complicitous) news media, and congressional Democrats begin to see, or at least
begin to acknowledge, that Bill and Hill were all the unseemly and vulgar things
the "vast right-wing" conspirators had been saying for the previous
eight years and before. Typical is the remark of New York Times left-wing
columnist Bob Herbert, who after January 20, 2001 suddenly realized: "The
Clintons are a terminally unethical and vulgar couple, and they've betrayed
everyone who ever believed in them" (p. 199). Well, duh! What gave you your
first clue? Olson herself said: "The Clintons are a strange dialectic.
Liberal-left progressive politics meets traditional corruption resulting in a
synthesis of boundless arrogance and entitlement " (p. 213). Comedian
Dennis Miller (pp. 207-8) very aptly (though rather crudely) compared the final
flourish of vulgarity of the ultimate power couple as they plundered their way
out of Washington to a garish float in a Mardi Gras parade (I will let the
readers find this quote for themselves).
And, by the by, have we forgotten that in 1999, as a blatant attempt at
pandering to the Puerto Rican population in New York State, for the sake of
Hillary's carpet-bagging Senate race there, Bill Clinton pardoned a group of
Puerto Rican terrorists guilty of 130 separate terrorist acts against the United
States?
We must never forget that the major national news media and the Democrats in
Congress and the Cabinet were Clinton's enablers for all eight years of his mis-administration
in Washington. Because they repeatedly provided cover for his corruption, they
are particeps criminis, guilty collaborators in all his evil doings. Read and
remember.
---Doug Kutilek
---
A QUESTION IN BAPTIST HISTORY
by William H. Whitsitt. New York: Arno Press, 1980. Reprint of C. T. Dearing,
Louisville, Kentucky edition, 1896. 164 pp., hardback.
This volume, first published in 1896, sparked a massive controversy in its day,
though it should not have. Whitsitt (1841-1911) was President of Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky, the third to lead that
institution, after J. P. Boyce and John A. Broadus. By careful research and
documentation, Whitsitt established as demonstrable fact that the practice of
immersion as a mode of Christian baptism had died out in England by the mid-16th
century (and was, in any case, applied only to infants); that John Smyth and
those English separatists associated with him who lived in Holland, though
practicing believer's "baptism," nevertheless unquestionably did so by
pouring or sprinkling, not immersion; that immersion as the mode of believer's
baptism as practiced by "anabaptists" in England was introduced into
England in 1641 from Holland; and that these Dutch anabaptists had themselves
adopted immersion just some 20 years earlier.
Judged on its merits as a work of historical research and the worth of its
conclusions, this volume must be accounted a first-rate treatment. Whitsitt's
evidence and conclusions are fully supported by contemporary and clear
documentation from the mid-17th century, and have not been refuted in the least
in the subsequent hundred years since the book was first published.
Whitsitt's convincing and thoroughly-documented treatise ignited the ire of
Landmark Baptists generally who had looked to John Smyth as a link in their
successionist chain. Whitsitt was shortly forced out of the presidency of SBTS,
and stands as a monument to the amazing ignorance, bigotry and prejudice
displayed by not a few Baptists against any facts which undermine their
presuppositions manufactured entirely out of the fabric of wishful thinking.
They deem it service to God to hate both the message and the messenger, while
ignoring undeniable evidence.
An appendix regarding the baptism of Roger Williams establishes credibly--and
contrary to the conclusions of Baptist historians Thomas Armitage and A. H.
Newman--that Williams, though for a few months an "anabaptist," was
rebaptized by pouring or sprinkling, not by immersion. The first immersed
believer in English America was one Mr. Lucar who had received believer's
immersion in England around 1641 before coming to America. And Whitsitt de
facto, though not by design, thereby supports the standard claim of Landmarkers
that the first Baptist/Immersionist church in America was that led by John
Clarke in Newport, Rhode Island, not the congregation Williams was briefly
associated with.
The table of contents of this volume, located after the European fashion in the
back of the book, strangely gives the number of the last page of each chapter
rather than the first.
---Doug Kutilek
---
BAPTIST PARTNERSHIP IN EUROPE
by J. D. Hughley. Nashville: Broadman, 1982. 144 pp., paperback.
Hughley was a Southern Baptist missionary and high-level Southern Baptist
Foreign Mission Board functionary in Europe from the 1940s through the time of
the writing of this book (we understand that he is now deceased). He served for
a four-year period during these years as president of the notorious
International Baptist Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. The purpose of the
book was to describe the then-current state of Baptists in Europe, with their
prospects and needs.
The book is a decidedly "mixed bag." It succeeds in giving a brief
history of the how and when Baptists first came to exist in various European
countries in the modern era. And some of his analyses are of value. However,
Hughley's perspective as 1) a Southern Baptist, and 2) an apparent member of the
"moderate" camp of the SBC, make him remarkably blind to many things.
First, he repeatedly speaks of missionaries assigned by the Foreign Mission
Board of the SBC to various fields of service in Europe, and never speaks of a
call from God to any of these places (in contrast, see Acts 13:2; 16:10). And
nothing is said about missionaries being sent by the churches; it is always the
Mission Board that sends, funds, directs and controls the missionaries (this
distancing of missions from the local church is one of the great defects in the
structure of the SBC, though I am happy to report that I have encountered
several SBC churches in the past decade which in part directly send and fund
missionaries). From a strictly New Testament perspective (and isn't that what
Baptists have historically professed to have?), it is always churches that sent
missionaries (and lest the independent Baptists feel too smug on this point, let
me insist that of the many missions offices and agencies among independent
Baptists, more than a few are usurping the responsibilities of local churches to
send and support missionaries directly. Anything--and I do mean anything--which
unnecessarily distances missions from the local church is counterproductive and
misguided).
Hughley declares that missionaries should not be sent to European countries
without the expressed request of the national Baptists there. But what if, I
ask, those national Baptists are 1) apostate (and not a few are); or, 2) devoid
of vision? Shall we let, for example, 10 million Hungarians go to Hell
unevangelized simply because the few Union Baptists there are lifeless and
ineffective? And he insists that if the choice is between sending workers or
money, the proper choice is to send money. Such a view is utterly wrong-headed.
Such a practice develops dependence among nationals on foreign monetary
resources, rather than God.
In Hughley's view, Baptists who join Baptist Unions, the European Baptist
Federation and the World Baptist Alliance are almost all that matter. He almost
sneeringly refers to those who stand aloof from these ecclesiastical entangling
alliances of conservatives and liberals, as "ultraconservative" and
"fundamentalist." He fails to deduce the obvious from information he
has gathered: in Ireland, it is only the separated, that is, the non-aligned
Baptists who are experiencing numerical growth. A parallel situation obtains in
virtually all countries in Europe. The motto of the Baptist Unions and
Federations in Europe should in all honesty be: "Unite and Die."
Hughley gushes with enthusiasm for post-Vatican II Catholicism (Vatican II was
the Roman Catholic Church Council which in the early 1960s authorized a number
of changes in Catholic practices, such as allowing the Mass to be said in the
vernacular rather than only in Latin), and claims there is much Biblical, even
evangelical teaching going on in the Roman Catholic Church. He asserts that
there is much to admire in Roman Catholic teaching, and that there is currently
a revival going on in the Roman Catholic Church. Such utter nonsense.
Historically, when there have been real "revivals" in the Roman
Catholic Church, those "revived" have either left that religion or
been forced out in droves--Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and millions
more.
Hughley notes that Baptists peaked numerically in the United Kingdom in 1906,
with something over 474,000 members, and that 75 years later, this number had
fallen to just 178,000 while the population of the U.K. had grown substantially.
No adequate explanation is given by Hughley for this decline, though the causes
are obvious to me:
1) The in-roads of destructive higher criticism in the late 19th century largely
gutted the Biblical faith of British Baptists. Spurgeon sought in the 1880s to
counter this pernicious evil by insisting on a clear and plain declaration for
the British Baptist Union on the inspiration, inerrancy and sole authority of
the Bible, but the Union overwhelmingly refused, showing just how far the poison
of apostasy had infected that body. It is certain that such British Baptist
leaders as John Clifford and Alexander MacLaren had already rejected belief in
the complete truthfulness of Scripture and had embraced much of higher criticism
(when I first learned that MacLaren had opposed Spurgeon in this controversy, I
lost all respect for MacLaren). Spurgeon did the right--the Biblical--thing and
withdrew from the Baptist Union [for a good account of the apostasy of late 19th
century British Baptists, see The 'Down Grade' Controversy, consisting of
excerpts from Spurgeon's publication, "The Sword and the Trowel."
Published by Pilgrim Publications, PO Box 66, Pasadena, Texas, 77501]. I have
learned that you can almost always judge the theology of British Baptists by
whether they agreed with or dissented from Spurgeon regarding this controversy.
As proof positive of the generally apostate condition of British Baptists, note
that Ernest Payne, a leading British Baptist of the 20th century, was for a time
president of the World Council of Churches, a rabidly apostate conglomeration of
every stripe of unbelief masquerading as "Christianity," or to use the
words of Revelation 18, "a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every
unclean and detestable bird."
2) Abandonment of Baptist distinctives. Most of the English Baptist churches
practiced "open membership" throughout the 20th century, that is, they
did not insist on "believer's baptism" as a pre-requisite for church
membership. In short, they abandoned this Baptist distinctive--the very doctrine
at issue that led to the formation of English Baptist churches in the mid-17th
century in the first place--and have abandoned the clear Biblical teaching and
practice on this point.
3) A soul-chilling high Calvinism which pervades most of the remaining
conservative Baptist churches. It is not quite Gillism, but not far removed from
it either. British Baptists are on the whole as dead and dry as Ezekiel's valley
of bones. Yet Hughley insists that the U.K. is not a suitable field for sending
missionaries!!!
Hughley, writing in 1981, even has good things to say about theoretical
communism--it has good intentions, namely to protect the weak and down-trodden
against exploitation by the powerful and rich (communism never got beyond this
as a mere theory, but practiced even worse and more widespread--and
brutal--oppression than the tyrannies it replaced). Hughley does condemn actual
communist practice. He also commends national Baptists behind the Iron Curtain
who 'go along to get along,' as we say, and doesn't think much of
"unregistered" Baptists, for example, in Russia. He quotes acceptingly
(naively?) a claim from a registered, state-approved Russian Baptist leader,
that every Baptist family in Russia had a Bible. This was, of course, a
bald-faced LIE of the first magnitude, uttered for propagandistic purposes to
deceive gullible religionists--and journalists--in the West. Hughley either
naively (and inexcusably) fell for the lie, or he knowingly helped propagate it.
Either explanation is a credible possibility.
The final portion of Hughley's book is a history and praise of the International
Baptist Seminary at Ruschlikon, Switzerland. Founded in 1949, the school had a
long series of short-termed presidents, and an international faculty and student
body, with a peak enrollment as of the time of writing of 74. Since Hughley
wrote, this theologically-corrupt school was de-funded by the resurgent
conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention because of the blatantly
apostate theology of the school, and the school has since departed from
Switzerland to Prague in the Czech Republic. Hughley, for a time seminary
professor and president, praises in this book the contribution to contemporary
Christianity made by the Swiss. His two chief examples are Karl Barth and Emil
Bruner, neither of whom was an orthodox Christian in any legitimate sense of the
term.
In the first 30 years of the seminary's presence in Switzerland, the school did
virtually nothing to propagate Biblical faith in that country. In 1950, Swiss
Baptists numbered 1,300. Thirty years later, just 1,425. And Hughley clearly did
not like most of the Swiss Baptists anyway, since they were
"ultraconservative" (his term), refusing to be part of the European
Baptist Federation and the Baptist World Alliance.
In most places, European Baptists are in sorry shape--infected with destructive
higher critical beliefs about the Bible, trained to be dependent on Western
money rather than God, and lulled into ecumenical union with unbelievers. Strong
fundamental separatist Baptists are the only ones who have any prospects of
effectively evangelizing Europe. Hughley is wholly blind to these facts.
---Doug Kutilek
---
A RETROSPECT by J. Hudson
Taylor. London: Morgan & Scott, n.d (1909?). 128 pp., hardback.
J. Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) was the founder of the China Inland Mission and did
more by far than anyone else in the 19th century to carry the Gospel message to
China. He personally prayed 1,000 workers to that vast mission field. He also
"showed the way" in regard to "faith missions" which rely
solely on God through prayer to meet their needs.
The incidents in this book--how Taylor learned to trust God's resources rather
than those of people, and numerous accounts of events in his early work in
China--are not a few of them most extraordinary, and though also found in other
accounts of Taylor's life (such as Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret and Hudson
Taylor and the China Inland Mission, both by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor), it is
nevertheless always worthwhile to be reminded of who and what Hudson Taylor was,
and to learn exactly how he was able to accomplish what he did for the glory of
God.
If this slim volume is met with, it should be obtained and read at once. In lieu
of access to it, any other book by or about J. Hudson Taylor, his life and his
work, receives our immediate, unqualified recommendation.
---Doug Kutilek
---
OUR BAPTIST DISTINCTIVES by
Mike Randall. Springfield, Missouri: Tribune Publishers, 1998. 64 pp.,
paperback. $5.00
The present editor of the Baptist Bible Tribune (and president-designate of
Baptist Bible College, Springfield, Missouri) here presents a series of 10 brief
articles delineating and explaining distinctive Baptist doctrines: believer's
baptism, baptism by immersion, separation of church and state, congregational
church government, etc. I am glad that there are still men willing to stand for
truth and denominational distinctives in this age of mushy doctrine and hazy
theology. I would characterize these treatments as adequate, though I would
suggest some improvements. First, each article is begun with a quote or two or
more by Baptist writers, or confessions of faith summarizing the consensus
Baptist viewpoint on the doctrine under consideration. Then follows a discussion
and presentation of the Biblical basis for this viewpoint. I would, in keeping
with the Baptist precept of the Bible as the sole authority for doctrine and
practice, have presented the Biblical evidence first, with the quotations from
Baptist writers and confessions reserved for the end as a summarization of the
Biblical evidence.
Second, Randall could have availed himself of several valuable sources that
would have enhanced his presentation. Chief of these is the section on
ecclesiology in A. H. Strong's Systematic Theology, which is to my knowledge the
best treatment as a whole of most of the doctrinal points addressed by Randall.
Additional sources that could and should have been consulted with profit are the
relevant portions of John Gill's Body of Divinity (18th century British Baptist)
and J. L. Dagg's Manual of Theology (19th century American Baptist). Lesser and
inferior sources are quoted and footnoted, but these three works are never noted
and were apparently not consulted.
With regard to some specific matters, Randall rather assumes (as do most
Baptists) rather than proves that Matthew 16:18 is a promise of church
perpetuity. He does not, however, endorse Landmark views of perpetuity, but
rather presents a spiritual succession view. He alleges that Matthew 28:19 is a
required baptismal formula (and even elevates it to the level of a Baptist
distinctive), too glibly dismissing the evidence in Acts that the Apostles never
employed the Trinitarian formula in baptism. He also too easily dismisses the
"deaconess" interpretation of I Timothy 3:11 (cf. Romans 16:1),
failing to note that the "deaconess" view has been accepted or allowed
by numerous Baptists at least from the 1600s on, including John Gill, B. H.
Carroll, Thomas Armitage, John Sampey and many others, and is widespread among
several Baptist groups today.
I would also suggest that in his explanation of the three descriptive terms of
the office of pastor (namely bishop/overseer, elder, and pastor), when he says
that "bishop" is the title and "elder" is the function,
these two should in fact be reversed: "elder" being the title of
office, and "bishop/overseer" being the function.
As a brief summary of Baptist distinctives, this is an adequate introductory
treatment. It has been translated into Hungarian, and perhaps other languages,
and so may be available for use by missionaries.
---Doug Kutilek
---
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS
by Henry C. Vedder. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907.
431 pp., hardback.
This volume has long been a "standard" treatment of Baptist history,
and deservedly so. The research is broad, the organization is good, and the
writing is highly readable. Any reader will be well-rewarded for time spent in
this volume.
Vedder surveys the history of not only the people with the name
"Baptist," but also those from the earliest Christian centuries on who
shared one or more of the distinctive doctrines of Baptists, though he does not
try to make Baptists out of those who did not share all the Baptist distinctives,
nor does he gloss over the sometimes serious doctrinal errors of Medieval groups
who some (e.g., J. M. Carroll) claim as Baptist forbears. He rejects Landmarkish
views of Baptist succession as unproven, unprovable, and unnecessary, adopting
rather the "spiritual successionist" view also held by Baptist
historian Thomas Armitage and many other Baptists.
Naturally such a volume has some limitations and deficiencies. First its
age--almost a century since publication--naturally means that the 20th century
is wholly absent (and where is the historian who will undertake the monumental
task of writing the history of Baptists in the 20th century?). And Vedder fails
to see (as not a few other convention Baptists, North and South, have failed to
see) the serious danger that the multiplication of denominational
"agencies" and "societies" is to the autonomy of the local
church and its centrality in world evangelism. Further, in his coverage of
Baptists worldwide, he all but completely omits any reference to Baptists in the
Orient whose numbers, even in 1907, were considerable--China, India, Burma,
Japan, and not a few other countries.
We must say a further word about the author himself and his theological views.
In this book, Vedder (1853-1935; see Armitage, History of the Baptists, page
facing 619, for a portrait of Vedder) writes as one committed to all the
fundamental doctrines of the Bible: its inspiration and inerrancy, the
miraculous birth of Jesus, His true Deity, His sinless life, vicarious death,
and bodily resurrection, etc., as well as adhering and strongly advocating all
the historic Baptist distinctives: believer's baptism by immersion, local church
autonomy, soul liberty and complete religious freedom, etc. Yet, in the years
after this book was published, Vedder, educated at the University of Rochester,
and Rochester Theological Seminary (where A. H. Strong was president for 40
years) departed radically from the faith he once professed. In an article in the
Watchman-Examiner of New York, dated January 3, 1918, Vedder declared that no
one who is "intellectually honest" can affirm that Jesus commanded
baptism in view of the doubt about the authenticity of Matthew 28:19; he added
that to affirm that Jesus did so is to us "the language of either ignorance
or dishonesty," (reported by A. T. Robertson, The Christ of the Logia, p.
113). Here Vedder rejects both the inerrancy of Scripture and the Baptist
distinctive of believer's baptism. Robert T. Ketcham, founder of the GARBC, in
his booklet The Answer to Whether of Not the American (Northern) Baptist
Convention is Modernistic, p. 11, quotes Vedder as writing: "Of all the
slanders men have perpetuated against the Most High, this doctrine of his
substitutionary atonement is positively the most impudent and the most
insulting. Jesus never taught and never authorized anybody to teach in his name
that he suffered in our stead and bore the penalty for our sins." (See also
H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, pp. 569-570). Vedder either never read, or
absolutely rejected, the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 20:28, "Just as
the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as
a ransom for many." And John 10:15, "I lay down my life for the
sheep." And Luke 24:46, 47, "This is what is written: The Christ will
suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness
of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at
Jerusalem."
Because of Vedder's apostasy, fundamentalists in the North sought
repeatedly--and unsuccessfully--to have him removed from Crozier Seminary where
he was professor of church history. I cannot account for the radical departure
of Vedder from the faith which he once strongly professed (cf. I John 2:19), but
there is not the least hint of such unbelief in his Baptist history, which
retains its value and should be among the very first volumes read by anyone
interested in Baptist history.
---Doug Kutilek
---
TALES OF AN EXTINCT MILITARY
SPECIES: A WORLD WAR II COMBAT GLIDER PILOT by J. Curtis Goldman. N. p.: n.p.,
n.d. 178 pp., paperback.
We previously reviewed Pastor Goldman's autobiography, Fifty Goldman Years in
the Baptist Bible Fellowship (AISI 4:1) in which he gave some brief accounting
of his adventures as a glider pilot in World War II. Here he fleshes out those
brief accounts, and details his life as a glider-pilot-in-training, and in
combat in Europe.
Always one with a love for "adventure" (shall we say), Goldman
committed one stupid, careless, foolish, reckless, and nearly suicidal stunt
after another from the first days in flight training until his last days in
uniform, antics both in the air and on the ground. With the youthful delusion of
virtual invincibility and immortality, Goldman risked life and limb--and more
than once nearly lost them--and pushed army regulations to and beyond the
court-martial limit repeatedly, yet somehow lived a virtually charmed life,
escaping with scarcely a scratch, and with an honorable discharge. He repeatedly
expresses his view that for him World War II was "fun," just one big
adventure. I have not yet decided whether Goldman the glider pilot was just
foolhardy, or at times actually insane. Maybe he was both.
To prove the extent of Goldman's "insanity," and the fact that
remnants of it may indeed linger, he actually names the girls he met and
romanced (in an honorable way) in the nearby towns of the various duty stations
and training camps he was assigned to. A completely sane man forgets those
things, and certainly would never put them in print for his wife to read!!
While it is true that Goldman was not yet a Christian in those days, he need not
have included all the details in some of the incidents he relates, and at times
his language is excessively crude and coarse, even vulgar.
There are a few factual errors in the book (among them identifying Patton's army
as "the 4th" rather than the correct "3rd"), several
repetitions and a considerable number of typos that could have been caught by a
good proof-reader.
Friends, acquaintances, admirers, and likely enemies, too, of J. Curtis Goldman,
will find this book of interest, as they repeatedly shake their heads wondering
how in the world he got away with or survived all the truly dangerous, or dumb,
stuff he did.
---Doug Kutilek
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