128 thoughts on “The Church That Jesus Founded”

    1. And for the record, the OP contains a lot of real twisting and butchering and perhaps even a few outright lies. 😉

      2. A lady that I know had a poem on her desk that started out like this, “Eye halve a spell chequer, it came with my pea sea.”
        I can’t remember the rest of it, but it’s probably been ten years since I’ve seen it.

        2. Found it!

          Eye halve a spelling chequer
          It came with my pea sea
          It plainly marques four my revue
          Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

          Eye strike a key and type a word
          And weight four it two say
          Weather eye am wrong oar write
          It shows me strait a weigh.

          As soon as a mist ache is maid
          It nose bee fore two long
          And eye can put the error rite
          Its rare lea ever wrong.

          Eye have run this poem threw it
          I am shore your pleased two no
          Its letter perfect awl the weigh
          My chequer tolled me sew.

        4. My company had a party one year. The menu included Vegetable Crudites’ The spell check, not recognizing French, changed it to Vegetable Crudities. The secretary accepted that and when the menu came out many of us wondered what, exactly, would be the SHAPE of those vegetables?

    3. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. My ex-MOG once said that at a business meeting about an issue with the municipality.

        1. Used car salesmen and drunken patrons at the restaurant I worked at are far more pleasant and charming, Dr F.

      2. I’ve heard that excuse a lot “better to ask forgiveness that get permission” – actually, it is often [b]easier[/b] (not “better”) to ask forgiveness than to get permission.

        At the basis of this is abusing the goodness of other people, and there are times when this is not acceptable; a pastor who buys Christmas presents for his family with church funds is guilty of misusing church funds; perhaps embezzlement. He can go to the deacons and ask forgiveness, and they often will “because he is the pastor”, but that does not make the practice acceptable.

        By-passing a city’s zoning requirements is risky — they may NOT forgive and insist that the structure be torn down.

        1. One of the reasons I resigned from a non-profit many years ago was some of the ways they would cut corners “in the name of Christ.” This included some buildings that were coded as “garages”, but were actually modeled as classrooms on the inside (garage doors on the outside). I sat in the meeting as it was explained by one of the board members, and I was gone within a few months. It was the last straw of many other shortcuts that were outright violations of state and local laws.

        2. It wasn’t a code or structure issue. It was something else. I will remain vague so as to not violate personal OPSEC.

        3. In the first church I pastored, the pastor before me had started a “building program” without any permits. They first built a privacy fence on part of the property, so you couldn’t see the new structure going up from the road. They then completed the shell quickly (with borrowed money), so someone unfamiliar with the church wouldn’t know it was an unfinished building. He then resigned.
          When I found out it was being built without a permit, I immediately told the trustees we should turn ourselves in and hope for mercy. The oldest one convinced me not to do so (I was 26 and a first time pastor). Unfortunately, we just didn’t have the money to finish the inside, and I didn’t even want to go before the church and recommend borrowing more money. On top of that, the building was being built incorrectly (it had virtually no foundation, no hurricane clips, wasn’t level, etc…).
          One day, about four men I didn’t recognize came onto the property (on a weekday) and stalked all over it. I went and asked if I could help them. One said, “I’m the city manager, and I’ve looked all over the property for your building permit, and I can’t find it!” I said, “That’s because we don’t have one.”
          He was SO mad! I explained my dilemma, and he got very agreeable. However, he required us to hire a real architect to draft plans for the building bed on its size and shape with the necessary modifications to make it compliant with city and county codes. Then we had to apply for a building permit and pay the fees. I apologized profusely and thanked him for being so kind.
          We eventually started making the changes (as money was available). We dug and poured footers, added cinder blocks under floor joists, etc…
          About 1.5 years into my pastorate there, the old trustee and his wife started a whisper campaign and got me voted out (by one vote).
          It’s not better or necessarily easier to ask permission!

      3. A real MOG doesn’t need forgiveness. A real MOG is God-called & God-sent. His permit is the KJV.

  5. Gee, even my Fundy church acknowledged that the church began at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2. These folks aren’t even very good Dispensentionalists!

    My teacher brain is spinning at the lack of proper capitalization, logical written argument, and historical accuracy. And, I believe in the Church (just definitely not this one).

    1. Church began with Pentecost? I’ve heard that, too. But I’ve generally seen Jesus gathering the Twelve as the start of the movement. Then again, speaking of the church as a ‘movement’ rather than an institution probably reveals a lot about the sort of circles I was in!

  6. There are so many churches in that area, some of them are bound to be the crazy type.

    I’ve been in this area of Mississippi several times – I remember passing one Baptist church that made it a point to express on their sign, in large letters, that they were NOT Southern Baptist.

    1. When I was a missionary in South America, we had many churches (good ones) that were “Bautistas del sur.”

      I always wondered how far south you had to get to still be a Southern Baptist!

  8. Anabaptist Secessionism. Problem is a little thing called history makes it not add up. Baptist have roots in the Protestant Reformation. Like or lump it does not change the fact.

  9. DORMITORY ACCOMIDATIONS
    The dormitories are among the best in the country. Rent is payable in advance. Request for reservations must be accompanied by a non-refundable deposit of one months rent.

    What’s an accomidation?

    The dorms are “among the best in the country?” Well, they probably have indoor plumbing; I can’t be sure from the photos.

    The faculty list shows extreme inbreeding.

  11. 30ad – They are probably referring to Jesus’ statement “upon this rock I will build my church,” ignoring the future tense of “will”

    1. I was wondering how they decided on that year. It seems to refer to the crucifixion, but scholars can’t be sure what year that took place in. (According to my understanding the most likely candidates are AD 29, 30, or 33.) Is 30 just a round number?

    2. Jesus as an IFB pastor makes no sense. Judas does, however. Judas had the “bag,” IFB pastors have the offering plates, and they are certainly interested in what gets put in.

  12. Oh, my, what arrogance. I love how ‘independent’ got thrown in there without any basis in the Bible, that they treat as their….’Bible’.
    This is what happens when you base your theology on single verses, or even half-verses, scattered through-out the scriptures. How many of us have heard entire sermons based on 1st Hezekiah 4:15b. (Yes, I know that’s not a real book.)

  13. Wow! I see the light and am grateful for the clear lines of logic that help me understand this important truth.

  14. Where do they teach “gaps in logic”? Because every Fundy seems to have mastered that skill. Is it a major at BJU or Pensacola?

  16. Last sentence in the church section of the doctrinal statement:

    Some have said only Baptist are going to heaven, but yet the truth is that ALL who put their faith in Jesus Christ, whether Baptist or not, are on their way to heaven.

    Well, at least they admit that.

    1. Dear Beth D:

      Perhaps they were baptists in everything except name. Same difference, no?

      Christian Socialist

    3. Yes they admit it on paper. If you told them your aunt was a Presbyterian though and wondered if she was saved the common answer would be “probably not”. They are good at using words to hide their true intents and beliefs.

  17. FIRST!

    Dear SFL Reader:

    Like the good folk at Tri-State Baptist College, I choose to live in denial of the world around me.

    Christian Socialist

    PS: If ‘these Scriptures are the final authority in all matters of faith and practice,’ why do we have a man-made confession?

  18. That description is almost identical to what I would hear form the pulpit. What I find humorous is that my pastor, while he believed this fantasy, was dead set against Christian colleges. He firmly believed that the men should be trained through their local church. So he started a basement “college-level” bible institute. I saw some of the courses. They were laughable. Nothing more than bible verse memorization and multiple choice questions. No critical thinking skills needed.

    1. Yes the list of acceptable colleges is narrowing – PCC and Bob Jones are too liberal now – Crown college still seems to be fundy enough

      2. I have a family member at Liberty. Of course we have to frown on them for being too liberal:).

    2. Dear Scorpio:

      I’m guessing there was little Hebrew as well…

      Christian Socialist

      1. That is ALMOST as bad as telling another human being about a secret disagreement you have with something the mannogawd said.

        Make no mistake – there is no greater sin than disagreeing with the mannogawd.

        1. Correction: There is no greater sin than to vocalize that you disagree with something the mannogawd said.

          I know this because my former mannogawd said so.

  19. Only two faculty members have terminal degrees which are not from Tri-State Baptist College. One of those two, teaching music education, has her degree from HAC. And the president-pastor has his from somewhere else.

    1. “Terminal degree?” I think most or all of those “doctorates” are honorary or given through each others’ “colleges.”

  20. As an Anabaptist, I have a major problem with Point 4. One of the major distinctives of the early Anabaptists was the separation of church and state.

    The Catholic Church and Protestant reformers both used the power of the state to coerce adherents and non-believers into conformity with the church’s positions. The Anabaptists taught a believer’s church, which by its very nature in voluntary.

    Except for the aberration at Munster, which allowed all Anabaptists to be tarred with the same brush, the position of the Anabaptist church was to have separate the state from the church.

    That position is a far cry from the modern Baptist attempts to legislate morality, outlaw thgays, and enforce Biblical law! Yes, there has been some Anabaptist influence in some of the Baptist history. But they CANNOT claim Anabaptism as their roots. Modern “Baptistism” comes largely out of Puritanism, which was DEFINITELY Protestant.

    And yes, the first Swiss Anabaptists, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock were originally Zwinglian, i.e. part of the Protestant Reformation. But they felt that Zwingli and Luther did not take the reforms far enough, especially in following the Sermon on the Mount. So the pretense that somehow the roots of the modern Anabaptists are completely separated from the “corrupt Protestants” is completely unjustified.

        1. The Zwikau prophets also did not believe in the separation of church and state; in fact, they started the Peasants War over it. However, they were a particularly odd bunch, and are usually called precursors to Anabaptism, since they predated the major movement. Muntzer is my favorite theologian of all time, but only because his potty mouth put even Luther to shame. “Scrotum”, “chamber pot”, and “donkey’s scrotum” were favorite invectives of his, whether referring to the Pope or Luther…

    3. I’m tired after reading all of that, and not really further enlightened, but it’s undoubtedly accurate.

  21. Also, who are the six basic tenants? And why would more tenants be mysterious?

    Sounds like a mystery novel: The Case of the Mysterious Seventh Tenant.

  22. I have always, from day one of fundy indoctrination, laughed at the “Trail of Blood” and hated so-called “church history”. This was mostly due to the fact that I had read the entire convoluted story already but in a Mennonite book. Weird how the Baptists never mention they’re from the same historical lineage.

    Yesterday the venerated trail was mentioned during the preaching. It’s so important that these babes in Christ here on the mission field know what privileged stock they come from. You wouldn’t want to teach them more about Jesus or anything.

  23. To quote Carol Burnett (I think), “Something ain’t right with him, some blew out his pilot light.”

  24. Question: What do IFBaptists think of the Amish? I am sure the answer to this question cannot be reduced to one person’s statement, but is there anything like a consensus?

      1. As a great philosopher once sang, “there’s something women like about a pickup man.”

  25. Um…….how do you have protestants recognized in #4 before the protestant reformation in #5…….and wasn’t it catholics who named the Anabaptists?

  28. The college’s statement continues (see their website) in the next paragraph:

    “The subject of the church is called a mystery in the Bible, and indeed anything beyond the 6 basic *tenants* would be an even greater mystery.” [emphasis added]

    He may mean “tenets” but if this college actually has only 6 tenants, basic or not, they have an enrollment problem — how they continue is yet another mystery.

  29. Dear Tri-State Baptist College:

    I did a Bibleworks search in the kjv for the word combinations ‘unbelievers tribulation’ and ‘catch saints.’ I didn’t need to do it, and you know why. But I did it anyway. Just so I could say so.

    Point # 8 [on church] states:

    ‘We believe the church was founded by Christ during His personal ministry…’

    Yet the King James Bible states:

    This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: [Act 7:37-38].

    Remember when ‘church meant church’ and ‘Israel meant Israel’ and never the twain would meet?

    Or perhaps Jesus wasn’t the prophet to come of whom Moses spoke.

    I believe he was, but resolving Ac 7:37-38 isn’t my problem.

    My view is described amply here:

    So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. [Eph 2:19-22]

    Christian Socialist

  30. I am just not seeing how they connected these dots: Jesus founded the church–they were baptists just not called baptists. Then there were the dark ages–but somewhere along the line protestants came about out of the dark and started calling a group of people anabaptists–so now the church that Jesus founded are the Baptists.

  31. Free Will Catholic, I put you’re poem on my Facebook. I couldn’t hep it. It was jest to wander full. It maid grate since.

  32. I need to say how much I love this site and all your comments. I do not comment often, but I feel as if you are all my brethren and sistren in some way. Thank you for the laughs and the thought provoking comments – you will never know how much you have all helped me with my faith struggles, coming out of Fundystan.

    I may or may not have consumed wine before posting this. I can say it was not merely “grape juice” but actual fermented wine, and for that I have no shame.

    1. Karen – Maybe the the stewardesses (here at SFL Airlines we kick it old school) didn’t tell you when you came aboard but we do have a rule that any fermented beverages must be shared with the pilot. I am sure it was just an oversight on your part and I look forward to sharing your beverage of choice.

      1. Karen, if you choose to comply with this request it might be best if you contact your stewardess and have them deliver this tribute to the pilot for you. They are much more used to fending off his untoward advances. What happens in the cockpit stays in the cockpit.

    2. St. Paul, bless his heart, commends the use of wine “for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”

      1. I heard someone argue that Timothy was to RUB the wine on his stomach, not imbibe it.
        The mind boggles.

        1. Oh, MY! I’d never heard that before! (In my circles, it was just always taught that it was unfermented grape juice.)

        3. I guess that person who said the wine was for stomach-rubbing never heard of internal medicine.

        6. However, I note that Thomas Sydenham, “the English Hippocrates” (1624-1689), prescribed as a treatment for intestinal obstruction that the patient drink mint water and lemon juice, while “I order, too, that meanwhile a live kitten be kept continuously lying on the naked belly” for two to three days.
          How you make a live kitten lie still for two to three days was not explained.

          My source for this interesting advice is “Gulp,” by Mary Roach, who notes that maybe the kitten’s kneading the abdomen with its paws (as many kittens and cats will do) was “viewed as a kind of therapeutic massage.”

        7. The Baptists hereabouts adhere to the “unfermented grape juice” theory. How people were able to keep grape juice from fermenting in a torrid desert climate before the advent of refrigeration is beyond me. When I pointed this out to an IFB friend, he replied, “In the last days there will be mockers.” And…how can one argue with unassailable logic like that?

  36. I knew somebody who taught that the church started after Paul got annoyed with the Jews and started going to the gentiles. Apparently that’s why baptism isn’t for the modern church. He was kicked out of one church for teaching that.

    1. *blink blink*

      As it happens, we’ve been reading through the account of the foofaraw that got Paul kicked upstairs clear to the Imperial court during morning prayer this month. According to this account, there were already Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, who were attempting to deal with the divisive issue of those pig-eating weirdos in Turkey being invited into the Church. They proposed a compromise in which the Gentile Christians would avoid the things that really squicked the Jewish Christians–that is, eating blood, fornicating, eating meat from the temple butcher shops, and strangling meat animals–and in return the Jewish Christians would stop pushing for circumcision and so forth. They also suggested to Paul that to avoid accusations of apostasy from their Jewish neighbors, he should go up to the Temple with some men who were fulfilling their Nazirite vows. And he took that suggestion, and got ambushed by a party among the Jews–not the Jewish Christians–which started his journey to Rome.

      Doesn’t sound like he got annoyed with them at all, if he listened to them.

      1. An accurate account, based on Acts. Which is the reason many contemporary theologians hold to “trajectory” theology and ethics. To add another wrinkle, after the Jerusalem council came to their consensus, Paul had no problem contradicting them in his own epistles. The movement was, by NT accounts at least, developing (or possibly Paul was just a brash jerk, a theory not without its own merits).

    2. YES!! My old-old fundy church taught that! The church started after Acts 28 when Paul tells the Jews he is no going to the Gentiles.

      Because reasons.

    1. Of course Jesus did! And it was personally autographed by King Jimmy and by Donald Trump.

    2. If the IFB Church is the same church that Jesus founded and the IFB Church exclusively uses the KJV then by the transitive property of fundiness, Jesus did use the KJV.

  38. I have heard this argument from IFBers before – that the one true church was founded by Jesus in Matthew 16 when he said to Peter “on this rock I will build my church…”. Matthew 16 is set in Caesarea Philippi, north of the Sea of Galilee. Yet, their #2 above says “From this church that Jesus started in Jerusalem…” How could the church be founded in Jerusalem when Jesus and the disciples were in another region of the country?

    My experience with those that worship the Bible is that they tend to know it the least.

  39. Wow, these guys are almost “ringing running boards” with the “One True Church” belief taught by the Holdemans.

    1. You know the Holdemans? That’s awesome!

      I just got to know some of them in the last few years. The ones I worked with are some of the nicest and friendliest people I’ve known.

      According to at least one of the people I talked to, they wouldn’t say that they are the ONLY people who are right. It’s just that they have apostolic succession and so they know that they are, and they can’t be sure about other groups.

      With all that said, the ones I know are very sweet and kind people.

  41. If the Protestants are bad in this account why does the author accept his Bible from a Protestant church (the C. of E.) ? If the C. of E. is not Protestant but some middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism that’s even wierder in some way cause why should Anglicanism, which is not even mentioned in this history, have such a trusted position that it can provide and produce the only legitimate English translation of Scripture?

  42. It never ceases to amaze me how this sect is so self involved. It’s actually quite extraordinary how they think the world revolves around them and their ridiculous bravado. Truly, it is a feat that staggers my mind.

  43. This doctrine bus known as “Baptist Bride” or Landmarkism. Only members of the TRUE BAPTIST church that can trace its roots back to Jesus will be the Bride at the marriage supper of the Lamb. All other saved folks will serve them!! Also the church is always local & visible, no universal church. I belonged to this cult for too many years. Sam Davison & Heartland Bible college follow this doctrine. They worship the church, not Jesus…

  44. I spent a few years at this college. The entire “college” is basically the size of a small Sunday school class, but with paying students. They most certainly worship their “Baptist Heritage” with a conference in it’s name annually.

  45. My dad’s semi – fundy church had a pastor that was a graduate and later a staff member of Tri-State for a few years. He was considered a great Bible scholar.
    My mom and dad could hardly wait after a Sunday evening service one time, to ask me what I thought about the sermon he had preached on Priscilla and Aquila. It was entitled “The Ladies Get Involved.” He preached about how Miss Aquila and Miss Priscilla find things to do in the church, not just the men! My mom was like, “Weren’t they husband and wife?”
    A year or two later, his mistress (with whom he had apparently had a relationship for many years while on staff at Tri-State) moved to the area, and they reestablished (or continued) their relationship. He was eventually exposed, left his wife of 20 years and married his mistress.
    It all made me want to send my kids to “college” there!

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