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To: George W. Bush

you mean this Piper?

John Piper is a popular Evangelical author and the senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, but though the church is called Baptist it allows non-immersion “baptisms” for church membership.

In 2002 Piper proposed to the church that the constitution be amended to allow a candidate to reject believer’s baptism by immersion if he “sincerely and humbly believes that it would be contrary to Scripture and conscience--and not just contrary to family tradition or desires--to be baptized by immersion and thus to count his infant ‘baptism’ or his adult sprinkling as improper or invalid.”

This is heretical and is a very strange position for a so-called Baptist church to take. The Greek word “baptizo” means immersion and baptism is called a burial in Scripture (Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12). There is not one example in Scripture of an infant being baptized. To the contrary, the requirement for baptism is faith in Christ and an infant is clearly incapable of that (Mk. 16:16; Acts 8:36-39; 16:30-33).

Many sincerely believe that their infant baptism or adult sprinkling is a genuine baptism, but they are sincerely misled and should in no wise be encouraged in their error by Baptist preachers.

Piper is a Calvinist who believes the strange heresy that regeneration precedes faith. Note the following statement:

“We believe that the new birth is a miraculous creation of God that enables a formerly ‘dead’ person to receive Christ and so be saved. We do not think that faith precedes ... the new birth. Faith is the evidence that God has begotten us anew. ... God begets us anew and the first glimmer of life in the newborn child is faith. This new birth is the effect of irresistible grace, because it is an act of sovereign creation” (John Piper, quoted from John MacArthur, Faith Works, 1993, p. 199).

Piper is also a New Evangelical ecumenist. For example, he was a speaker at the 2004 National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, joining hands in that forum with Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and Pat Robertson, all of whom have a close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Graham follows in his father’s footsteps in turning converts over to the Catholic Church. Dobson has appeared on the cover of Catholic magazines and to our knowledge has never warned his many Catholic listeners to come out of Rome. Robertson wrote the foreword to A House United? Evangelicals and Catholics Together: A Winning Alliance for the 21st Century (NavPress, 1994). He said that Catholics and Protestants “have a moral imperative to join together” to oppose cultural evils such as abortion and praised Roman Catholic Keith Fournier for his “deep dedication to helping to heal the divide” that “separated the Body of Christ.” Three years earlier Robertson had invited Fournier to be the executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice at Regent University. Haggard, Senior Pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said in October 2005: “New Life doesn’t try to ‘convert’ Catholics” and “the church would never discourage its members from becoming Catholic or attending Catholic Mass” (The Berean Call, Jan. 2006). Three Roman Catholic organizations were active at the 2004 NRB conference. The Global Catholic Network ran an ad in the NRB newspaper each day and rented exhibit space. Priests for Life handed out packets of their material; and Catholic Answers, which promotes Roman Catholic dogma, also participated.

Dr. Ralph Colas, who wrote an eyewitness report of the meeting, concluded: “This year some speakers, like John Piper, had more Bible content than is usually presented at NRB conventions. However, not one identified the apostates, Roman Catholicism as well as those who embrace extra-biblical revelations and dreams, as being a threat to the people of God. As it is so often at such new evangelical meetings, it is not necessarily what they say--but what they fail to say that creates the confusion and further compromise. The NRB continues to be a hodgepodge of believers and unbelievers, and its broad inclusivism reveals it fits exactly in the center of the new evangelical camp.”

Regardless of the good things that he might teach, John Piper is a New Evangelical and a Calvinist who despises Scriptural baptism and should therefore be avoided (Rom. 16:17; 2 Thess. 3:6).

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Rom. 16:17).

“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thess. 3:6).
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/awarning-johnpiper.html


157 posted on 07/26/2006 1:49:48 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration (Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? (Gal.4:16))
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To: fortheDeclaration
I'm not suggesting I would join his church.

And Baptists today do believe in baptism by immersion, as they always have.

In a local Baptist church, a man was baptized this week, someone who almost never attended, but for the sole apparent reason of voting to discipline members he hated. It's difficult to conclude that he has neglected baptism for years and then suddenly become concerned about baptism.

It was a baptism of hatred.

This doesn't excuse Piper and I'd never join his church. But we should keep in mind how desperate is the fight for any sort of sound historic doctrine, among Baptists or Protestants or even with Rome's followers.

Of course, you know what scripture teaches about the time coming when Christians "will not endure sound doctrine".

Piper is not a pope. He may be trying to salvage his Baptist church from a liberalizing membership. You know these megachurches attract all sorts of unsound Christians and those who aren't actually Christian. And Piper's fight for doctrinal soundness may not yet be ended.

2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
2Ti 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
2Ti 4:5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

159 posted on 07/26/2006 10:27:43 AM PDT by George W. Bush
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To: fortheDeclaration
“Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thess. 3:6).

Sound teaching and aptly quoted. I've always wondered if this verse justifies second-degree separation among Baptists.

I have separated from my local church, no longer able to ignore the heretics and the dramatists and other confused persons there. They resist any teaching of sound doctrine and are simply too ignorant of scripture and Baptist history to operate a Baptist church. But I'm not certain if second-degree separation is fully scriptural.
160 posted on 07/26/2006 10:39:43 AM PDT by George W. Bush
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