THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
Elder Bill Allen
I believe we have all heard that when one begins to depart from tried and true ways into areas that are untested and unsure that it is called “going down a slippery slope.” As with any natural slope, it is easy to go down, but difficult or impossible to reverse our course and return to level ground. I wish to address the dangers of leaving the safe ground of Scriptural principles for the slippery slopes of innovation in the church.
The church has gone by many names over the centuries, but Primitive Baptist is what it is known as today. We have a distinct identity as a people who stand for biblical truth and principle. We hold to the Scriptures in our doctrine and in our practices, which are simplicity in Christ. It is this simplicity, particularly, that I desire to address at this time.
What is our rule for our practices? How are we to govern what things are allowed as part of the corporate worship of God? There is but one answer: the Scriptures. Every Primitive Baptist church firmly declares in her articles of faith that the Holy Scriptures are our sole rule of faith and practice. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God “that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” It is only logical that Scripture is our rule, that it is by positive precept of the Bible.
Our rule is not, nor has ever been, what the Scriptures do not say. We are not ruled by the silences of Scripture. This is known as the Regulatory Principle of Scripture. We can take as an example the fact that God had spoken only concerning the tribe of Levi as being priests. That was all it took to exclude all other options. God did not have to say specifically that Dan or Benjamin could not be priests, only that Levi was to be the priestly tribe.
This principle held down until the time of the Lord. Even for Him to become our High Priest, He had to be so after another order, that of Melchisedec, and with a change of the very Law by his own fulfillment of it, and the establishment of a New Testament.
Brethren, if even our Lord was not excluded from this principle, how is it that we can say in our day that we will do as we please concerning the worship of God and the exercise of our Christian duties by saying that the Scripture does not forbid this or that? It is a slippery slope indeed if we give ourselves over in religious governance to the silences of the Scripture rather than the clear words of God.
To use the Scriptures (or rather not to use them) in such an unscrupulous way is to do what is right in one’s own eyes.
My religious journey in this life has consisted of the Lord leading me away from those who do that which is right in their own sight instead of that which is defined in Scripture. Most recently, I left a people known as Progressive Primitive Baptists.
As touching the Doctrine of Grace, most were as solid as one could desire. Having left the Missionary Baptists prior to coming to them, I found that sound of Grace refreshing indeed. However, when it came to practice in the church, they had incorporated such things as Sunday Schools, instrumental music and other works typical of virtually any other worldly denomination.
Why? They would claim it was because the Scriptures did not forbid it! They did not see the multiple commands to sing in the church as sufficient to exclude the use of musical instruments. They did not see the instructions in Scripture that God had given the Church the gift of pastor/teacher and for women to keep silence in the churches as sufficient grounds to exclude Sunday Schools.
These things, and others, they do because they had abandoned the Regulatory Principle of Scripture to do those things that were right in their own eyes, all the while claiming that it was justified because it was not forbidden. In doing so, they have gone down a very slippery slope that has led them away from fellowship with the true Church of Jesus Christ.
My purpose is not to rail against the group of whom I have just spoken. My aim and concern this day is with those who are still on good ground, but who are walking perilously close to the precipice of a very slippery slope; to sound a warning to step back and consider their perilous position. Too many of our brethren today are beginning yet again to do what is right in their own eyes, claiming they are justified in their actions because the Scriptures do not forbid what they desire to do. This is called by many today Liberalism, but it is in fact no different from Progressivism [my emphasis – Ed.]. It is the same fundamental error. It is the same slippery slope.
I find the following in “A Loving Appeal to the Primitive Baptists,” by Elder John R. Daily, written in 1906: “I had heard serious charges preferred against Elder J. V. Kirkland and strong expressions of belief that he was going to the Modern Mission Baptists, and I was asked by a number of brethren who were interested if I thought he would go to them. I said I did not believe he would, that I had confidence in him as a true Primitive Baptist and believed he would stand with us if others did go. When I read his proposition for a Federal Government [of our churches] I was surprised; and when I heard he had espoused the Arminian Baptist contention that the commission was given to the church, my surprise increased. But I hoped he would cease to advocate views so unscriptural when he read the scriptural evidence and convincing arguments presented by some of our ablest ministers against them and saw the opposition of the people, so nearly unanimous, against his new theories.”
It seems that brethren in our day trying to contend for the commission being given to the church are not the first. One hundred years ago we find Elder Daily being “surprised” that a Primitive Baptist would be contending for this. He was not just surprised, but greatly so. Why? because to promote the idea that the commission was given to the church, rather than to the apostles, is a hallmark of Missionism.
Missionism is foreign to the true church of Jesus Christ. It saddens me greatly in our day that such a system not only has raised its head again among the Primitive Baptists, but that it has not been condemned resoundingly from every quarter. Not only this, but an organization actually has been set up specifically for the purpose of raising money for these activities.
It distresses me greatly that this error concerning the commission, and the missionary activities it is designed to justify, are being shrugged off as an aberration or something that can be ignored. The very missionary “show-and-tell” visitations to churches that I experienced during my youth among the Missionary Baptists are now happening periodically in Primitive Baptist churches.
What is happening to us, brethren? We should repent of these things. Will we remain Primitive Baptists, or will we continue down the slippery slope that takes us away from the narrow way of the church of Jesus Christ and into the broad way of the world? Submitted by Elder Mark Green