For those times when the “weaker brother” or “appearance of evil” aren’t the right tool to force a person to follow the fundy’s rules, there is one final tool that can be put into use to apply the needed pressure: whipping out James 4:17. (for those of you who are not fundies that passage reads “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”)
The trick here is making sure that the “him that knoweth” is always a fundy leader since he alone is qualified to define what GOOD is. The argument is made thus:
1. Sunday School is good.
2. You have not signed up to teach Sunday School this year.
3. You are in sin until you sign up to teach a Sunday School class.
It’s clear at a glance that this method of coercion has more uses than duct tape. What other seventeen words could give someone the power to draft free labor for everything from washing the church vans to bringing popsicles to VBS?
Funny how the rest of the stuff that comes before the word “therefore” in the verse doesn’t really get brought up in these conversations. It must not be that good.
As has been posted before, fundamentalists love their dispensational charts. However, this love of charting does not stop with maps of the end times.
Fundamentalists not only believe that the sign gifts of acts have ceased, they also believe that those who practice tongues, prophecy, and healing gifts in the modern church are actually empowered by dark forces of evil. To prove this point beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is a great illustration that has been floating around fundamentalist circles for about forty years now that goes something like this…
A missionary from some faraway dark place that is just lousy with demon activity comes back home from the field and goes to a church service where people are speaking in tongues. As he listens suddenly he turns white as a ghost and yells at everybody to stop because unbeknownst to them they have been blaspheming fluently in a foreign language!!!
The key here is that the language must be very obscure and known only to the missionary who tells the story. The devil is sneaky enough not to make people blaspheme in something so common as Spanish or Italian. It must be some strange dialect that is only known to a few natives in some place like Africa, China, or Boston.
But no matter how apocryphal the circumstances there’s no doubt in any fundamentalist mind that such a thing could happen and indeed probably did happen. Who knows? One supposes that if an infinite number of charismatics held and infinite number of services anything is possible.
“Storehouse Tithing” is a favorite topic among fundamentalist pastors, especially when building project fever strikes a congregation. And why not preach on tithing regularly? It’s a frequent theme through Scripture as evidenced by at least 3 or 4 verses in the New Testament — most of which involve Jesus using it as example of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And then there are all the times when the command is given to the church. There’s…uh…well…I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.
Asking a fundamentalist to explain this lack of New Testament commands about tithing will likely be met by a lecture on “evil questioning” and a few hand-picked verses from the Old Testament that fundies somehow know are still applicable today. One can only assume there is a special class in “Figuring Out Which Old Testament Stuff The Church Still Needs To Do” given at the local basement bible college. (Short Answer: Whichever parts don’t involve giving up cotton blend shirts or bacon)
A fun experiment is asking a fundy whether or not 9% of their tithe is kept in the levitical refuge cities. After all, if we’re following the Scripture let’s follow all of it, amen?
When it comes to Roman Catholics, the major disagreement amongst fundamentalists is whether in the book of Revelation the Pope is actually the anti-Christ or merely the False Prophet. Either way, they all agree that Roman Catholics want to run the world and are responsible for quite a number of its ills.
Based on reports from the likes of Jack Chick and his tales of former Jesuit Alberto Rivera, fundamentalists are willing to believe any number of conspiracy theories about Roman Catholics — up to and including that the Gestapo was run by the Jesuits. Some will also inform you that Roman Catholics are responsible for Free Masons, Lincoln’s Assassination, The New World Order, disco music, Oprah, and the “song” Boom, Boom, Pow.
The only people that fundamentalists may distrust more than Roman Catholics are the Communists. Unless, of course, you subscribe to the theory that the Vatican is the real power behind Communism too. There’s a sale on tinfoil hats on aisle 5.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
For those times when the “weaker brother” or “appearance of evil” aren’t the right tool to force a person to follow the fundy’s rules, there is one final tool that can be put into use to apply the needed pressure: whipping out James 4:17. (for those of you who are not fundies that passage reads “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”)
Fundamentalists not only believe that the sign gifts of acts have ceased, they also believe that those who practice tongues, prophecy, and healing gifts in the modern church are actually empowered by dark forces of evil. To prove this point beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is a great illustration that has been floating around fundamentalist circles for about forty years now that goes something like this…
“Storehouse Tithing” is a favorite topic among fundamentalist pastors, especially when building project fever strikes a congregation. And why not preach on tithing regularly? It’s a frequent theme through Scripture as evidenced by at least 3 or 4 verses in the New Testament — most of which involve Jesus using it as example of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And then there are all the times when the command is given to the church. There’s…uh…well…I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.
When it comes to Roman Catholics, the major disagreement amongst fundamentalists is whether in the book of Revelation the Pope is actually the anti-Christ or merely the False Prophet. Either way, they all agree that Roman Catholics want to run the world and are responsible for quite a number of its ills.