The Double Divisiveness Of The New Evangelicalism -- By: Richard V. Clearwaters

Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 01:2 (Summer 1958)
Article: The Double Divisiveness Of The New Evangelicalism
Author: Richard V. Clearwaters


The Double Divisiveness Of The New Evangelicalism

Richard V. Clearwaters

Pastor, Fourth Baptist Church

President, Central Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary

Recently Rev. W. A. Ashbrook authored an article, “The New Evangelicalism—the New Neutralism,” in which he makes the following statement in a single paragraph:

“Bible-believing Christians would do well to beware of this New Neutralism for four valid reasons. First, it is a movement born of compromise. Second, it is a movement nurtured on pride of intellect. Third, it is a movement growing on appeasement of evil. And finally, it is a movement doomed by the judgment of God’s Holy Word.”

It is shocking to say that Christianity did not spring from the New Testament, but rather the New Testament from Christianity! As plain and emphatic as this may be, let us not be deluded by the New Evangelicalism with even the hint of a suggestion that Christianity began solely as a religion of the spirit with no authority. In fact, Jesus Himself said just before His ascension to His amazed disciples in Luke 24:44, 45 the following words: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.” It is obvious therefore, that Christianity began as a religion of authoritative books (called by us the Old Testament) and the New Testament Christians ended their era by adding to that collection of thirty-nine authoritative books twenty-seven more authoritative books called the New Testament.

We are living in a day when people are choosing their own means and manner and mode of operation irrespective of the instruction given by Bible authority. “God is blessing, God is blessing,” they keep saying; and in many instances we heartily agree that “God is blessing.” God, in our day, is being forced to use man’s “second best,” “third best,” and “fourth best” and blesses accordingly. God’s Word has always demanded separation from evil and has always denounced amalgamation with evil.

Recently a liberal, self-confessed Neo-Orthodox minister authored a pamphlet in which he declared that the breach was closed between conservatism and liberalism for which he was so grateful. In the same pamphlet he also acknowledged that the closing of one breach in the center of the church had opened two more breaches; one breach to the left between the fundamentalists and the conservatives was a wide gap; ‘and still an...

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