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Separation
Die Heretic
I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden Gate Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off. I tried to dissuade him from committing suicide and told him simply that God loved him. A tear came to his eye.
I then asked him, “Are you a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, or what?”
He said, “I’m a Christian.”
I said, “Me, too, small world. . .Protestant or Catholic?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me, too, what denomination?”
He said, “Baptist.”
I said, “Me, too, Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Baptist.”
I said, “Well, ME TOO, Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”
I said, “Well, that’s amazing! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist.”
I said, “Remarkable! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
I said, “A miracle! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
I said, “DIE, HERETIC!’ and pushed him over the rail.
Source unknown
Not Isolated but Insulated
“We are not to be isolated but insulated,” said Vance Havner, “moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it.” Separation is contact with contamination. Jesus was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26), yet He was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34).
The Integrity Crisis by Warren W. Wiersbe, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1991, p. 81
Only then I’ll Fellowshsip With You
Believe as I believe—no more, no less;
That I am right (and no one else) confess.
Feel as I feel, think only as I think;
Eat what I eat, and drink but what I drink.
Look as I look, do always as I do;
And then—and only then—I’ll fellowship with you.
Swindoll, Growing Strong, p. 286
Church Name
Name of a church seen in Michigan, “Original Church of God, Number Two.”
Source unknown
Be Thankful for Good Works
Let us be on our guard against this feeling. it is only too near the surface of all our hearts. Let us study to realize that liberal tolerant spirit which Jesus here recommends and be thankful for good works wheresoever and by whomsoever done. Let us beware of the slightest inclination to stop and check others merely because they do not choose to adopt our plans or work by our side. We may think our fellow-Christians mistaken in some points. We may fancy that more would be done for Christ if they would join us and if all worked in the same way. We may see many evils arising from religious dissensions and divisions. But all this must not prevent us rejoicing if the works of the devil are destroyed and souls saved. Is our neighbor warring against Satan? Is he really trying to labor for Christ? This is the grand question. Better a thousand times that the work should be done by other hands than not done at all. Happy is he who knows something of the spirit of Moses, when he said, “Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets,” and of Paul, when he says, “If Christ is preached, I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice” (Numb. 11:29; Phil. 1:18).
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, St. Mark, Cambridge: James Clarke, 1973, pp. 190-91
Telling People Your a Christian
During WWI one of my predecessors at Tenth Presbyterian Church, Donald Grey Barnhouse, led the son of a prominent American family to the Lord. He was in the service, but he showed the reality of his conversion by immediately professing Christ before the soldiers of his military company. The war ended. The day came when he was to return to his pre-war life in the wealthy suburb of a large American city. He talked to Barnhouse about life with his family and expressed fear that he might soon slip back into his old habits. He was afraid that love for parents, brothers, sisters, and friends might turn him from following after Jesus Christ. Barnhouse told him that if he was careful to make public confession of his faith in Christ, he would not have to worry. He would not have to give improper friends up. They would give him up. As a result of this conversation the young man agreed to tell the first ten people of his old set whom he encountered that he had become a Christian. The soldier went home.
Almost immediately—in fact, while he was still on the platform of the suburban station at the end of his return trip—he met a girl whom he had known socially. She was delighted to see him and asked how he was doing. He told her, “The greatest thing that could possibly happen to me has happened.” “You’re engaged to be married,” she exclaimed. “No,” he told her. “It’s even better than that. I’ve taken the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.” The girls’ expression froze. She mumbled a few polite words and went on her way.
A short time later the new Christian met a young man whom he had known before going into the service. “It’s good to see you back,” he declared. “We’ll have some great parties now that you’ve returned.” “I’ve just become a Christian,” the soldier said. He was thinking, That’s two! Again it was a case of a frozen smile and a quick change of conversation.
After this the same circumstances were repeated with a young couple and with two more old friends. By this time word had got around, and soon some of his friends stopped seeing him. He had become peculiar, religious, and—who knows!—they may even have called him crazy! What had he done? Nothing but confess Christ. The same confession that had aligned him with Christ had separated him from those who did not want Jesus Christ as Savior and who, in fact, did not even want to hear about Him.
Christ’s Call To Discipleship, J. M. Boice, Moody, 1986, pp. 122-23
Resources
- “In Search of Unity,” E. Dobson, p. 120, Doctrinal Differences and the Issue of Separation.
- Between Two Truths, Klyne Snodgrass, Zondervan, 1990, p.159
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Come Out and be Separate
It is often argued that we should stay in the midst of churches and bodies whose sins and follies we deplore, in the hope of saving them for God and mankind. Such reasoning has a good deal of force in the first stages of decline. A strong protest may arrest error and stop the gangrene. But as time advances, and the whole body becomes diseased; when the protests have been disregarded, and the arguments trampled underfoot; when the majority have clearly taken up their position against the truth—we have no alternative but to come out and be separate. The place from which we can exert the strongest influence for good is not from within, but from without. Lot lost all influence of his life in Sodom; but Abraham, from the heights of Mamre, was able to exert a mighty influence on its history.
F. B. Meyer
Lived In a Plastic Bubble
Because his body had no immune system to fight disease, a lad in Texas lived out his short life inside a bubble. For more than 10 years he lived in the plastic dome, isolated from the infectious agents that others live with which could prove fatal to him. He breathed filtered air, ate sterile food, and until his final days was touched only by hands wearing sterile rubber gloves. Some Christians believe isolation is the only way they can keep from “being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).
Source unknown
Separation from the Unclean Thing
The doctrine of separation from “the unclean thing” is neglected today by professing Christians, but it is still here in God’s Word. The context indicates that Paul is warning against Christians being “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” and urging us to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (II Cor. 6:14, 7:1).Such separation does not mean having no contact at all with unbelievers, “for then must ye needs go out of the world” (I Cor. 5:10), whereas Jesus commanded: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). He also prayed to the Father “not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15).
He does demand, however, that we not compromise with unbelief or with the unclean thing. We are “born again” into the family of God through simple faith in the person and saving work of Christ, but the full manifestation and fellowship of our relation with the heavenly Father as His spiritual sons and daughters is evidently, in this passage, conditioned on the vital principle of separation from all unbelief and filthiness of the flesh, with Jesus as our example (Heb. 7:16).
We are specially warned to “turn away” from those who, “having a form of godliness,” yet attempt to accommodate the naturalistic viewpoint of modern scientism within the Scriptures, thus “denying the power thereof” (II Tim. 3.5). “Be ye separate, saith the Lord.”
Source unknown
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