A Letter From A Reader
Dear Baptist Pillar,
I would like to make a comment about the article “The Silent
Witness” VOL. 3 NO. 2 by Robert
Billings.
I do agree totally that our children ought to be taught
Scripturally. You seem to give creditability to
raising Godly children only to the Christian school. Yet
Scripturally we seem to be directed into teaching them at home,
you don’t seem to give any place for the home schooler.
It’s either the public school or Christian School in this
article. It’s the duty of the parents, not the schools duty
to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
You also seem to think that the hot-house is a place where you
raise strong plants. I am a nursery owner and that is very false.
The hot-house is a place where the atmosphere and temperature and
total environment is controlled to best suit the young plant to
make it grow rapidly and produce fruit more quickly than outside
plants. But not strong plants. These plants are highly fragile!
If you take them out of this controlled environment and place
them in the wind the stem will break. If you place them in the
hot sun the leaves will shrivel up. If you get frost on them they
are dead. On the other hand, if you take the young plant and
condition it outside and grow it there, you will have a far
better plant producing more flowers and fruit than the hot house
plant. This argument by Mark Fakkema should really not be used as
an example unless the young plant never ever goes outside, but
that makes us like the Monks in the Monastery.
Thirdly, Lot is given as an example to not be living in the
world. Yet Lot raised 2 daughters in the
middle of all this and they were righteous also. They were
virgins. The Bible does not say that Lot or his family were
indulging in the activities of the Sodomites. He raised his kids
in the middle of all this. Now after he finally gets them all
separated they get immoral!
I’m not trying to justify living with sinners (unsaved). But
the examples you give are not correct and
great people have come out of both environments. Remember we are
in the world and not of it. You sound like you are telling people
that if you are schooled in the world that you are worse off then
if you are schooled in the Christian school. I think both are
inferior to the Christian homeschool.
Looking at the people in our church I can not find one single
person who was schooled in the Christian school. Our pastor and
former pastor who started this work came out of public schooling.
They were vexed as Lot was but God delivered them. All of our
Sunday School teachers, bus drivers, and every single member of
our church in the 9 years of its existence has come out of the
public school. I’m not sticking up for them, I’m
sticking up for God. II Peter 2:9, Speaking of Lot — God
knoweth how to deliver the Godly out of temptations. I was
delivered, my wife, and 3 kids, all delivered. I do know of a few
couples who Christian schooled their kids in the basement of the
other Baptist Church. I can tell you some horror stories of these
so called Christian kids. Almost all of these kids, as protected
as they were, are no longer in the Church but in the world. One
family had 3 kids. The 2 girls were in the Christian school and
the boy in the public school. The two girls both had children
from several men out of wedlock, they have both been shacked up,
married, divorced and shacked up again. Now they have lost their
children to the government. The brother has been coming to our
church for 7 years.
What I’m getting at is that God takes people out of the
world and uses them just as He uses people who have been
Christian Schooled. Just look at the great people in the Bible,
how many of them had Christian parents who taught them. Some were
raised and schooled in the world. The authors of the Scriptures
were not schooled in a Christian school. The most important
teaching is in the home. No Christian School can replace that!
In our church we would like to set up a school but right now all
the kids go to public or homeschool.
The public schooled kids are taught not to be “silent
witnesses” but to stand for Christ and evangelize where ever
possible. We have won several to Christ and baptized probably 10
last year — all out of the public school, all invited and
helped by Christian kids of the public school. How do Christian
school kids get to do that? In order to evangelize you have to go
out. In the Christian school, that is where you have the
“silent witness.” No one to witness to.
So I have seen many advantages to Christian kids in public
schools. As I have seen Christian men in public work places. Both
have the ability to exercise what they have learned to the
unsaved. How can we win them if we don’t go out to them?
They may vex us but as Lot was delivered, so shall we be.
I am sorry for taking up so much of your time. I guess it takes
me longer to write this than it does to
read it at your end. I read your paper when I get it at the
Victory Way Baptist Church in Quesnel, B.C.
Other people have read it but they say it is full of bashing
everyone who doesn’t believe what you believe.
I tend to find very little edification in reading articles aimed
at controversy. Most of yours are.
I found the article of Baptist Cows (deacons), kind of
disturbing. Most pastors that I know were deacons at one time.
They served their office well and have been rewarded by God to be
found worthy of becoming a pastor. Calling deacons Baptist Cows
is not a way to show good Christian love to servants in the
Church. Yes, some of them can cause a lot of problems. So do
children, should we stop having them too?
If you took deacons (servants) out of our church there would be
no pastor, no Sunday School teachers, no bus ministry, no old
folks ministry, no janitorial work, and the doors wouldn’t
even open on Sunday. All of the work in our church is done by
servants, and that is all a deacon is, a servant. If you
don’t care for deacons then don’t call yourself a
Baptist. Baptist churches all through history have had deacons.
Jesus said, “where I am, there shall my servants (diakonos)
be.”
Are you a servant? Then you also are a deacon because that is all
it means. I am a deacon, but not a Baptist Cow. Baptists
don’t own me and I am not a servant to Baptists. I am a
servant to Christ. I was baptized into Christ, not into Baptist.
Therefore I am a servant of Christ.
Thank you very much for your time. If you put some evangelizing
in your paper I would share it with the Lost, but as it is now, I
don’t think they would be interested.
May God bless you In His service (diakonia).
J.D.
Quesnel, B.C.
Editor’s Reply:
Let me state first of all, we here at The Pillar agree with you
on some points made. We are not against home schoolers, we whole
heartedly support them. The responsibility of raising children in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord does rest on the home,
Deut.11:19 and many other verses lay that responsibility upon us.
Almost every family at the Bible Baptist Church here in Brandon
are involved in home schooling. So just because we did not run an
article on home schooling does not mean we are against them. In
the past and in the future we have and will run articles on home
schooling. And yes I do agree with you home schooling is the
best. Our church school is only a support to our home schoolers,
not a replacement.
But there are some things we totally disagree with you on. Maybe
the hot-house was not a good
illustration on every point pertaining to Christian school as
apposed to public school, but you must admit the plant that is
raised in a controlled environment at least has a better chance
at survival than one that is just placed right out into the
garden, where frost or whatever can destroy it. The idea is to
protect the plant as long as possible so that it will have a
fighting chance.
Your use of Lot and his family as an illustration on how to raise
children in the world was totally
ridiculous. Where in Scripture does the Bible say Lot’s
daughters were righteous? My Bible says that God delivered just
Lot and refers only to him as being righteous. Where do you
suppose his daughters learned how to get their father drunk and
commit incest? Of course in our day they can learn it in sex
education.
You make the statement “Now after he (Lot) finally gets them
all separated they get immoral.” My friend the idea that
separation brings immorality is anti-Christian. It was God who
brought them out of Sodom not Lot. Might I add dragged them out.
And God commands us to come out from among them and be ye
separate, II Cor. 6:17. The idea to use Lot on how to raise
children is pure stupidity. He lost everything and it all started
by allowing his flesh to direct his life and pitching his tent
toward Sodom (world).
The idea that raising children in the devil’s system will
make them strong and a witness is false. For
every example you could give me of a Christian school child gone
bad, hundreds could be given for
public school kids gone bad. You need to realize that public
schools are not what they use to be. I, too, went to public
school but that was before they booted prayer, the Bible, and God
out. It was before they introduced 12 years of sex education into
the school system. Any place where my God is not welcome, it is
not a place for myself or family, and God is not welcomed into
the ungodly, Christ rejecting, public school system. Should I as
a parent, who is responsible for my children’s education,
allow my children to be taught that Evolution is a fact? I think
not.
As far as Christians and Home schoolers being silent witnesses,
that does not have to be so. Our youth go door to door witnessing
to others. Our young are not silent witnesses, nor should you be.
I also do not think our children have to go to an anti-God system
to win others. We are to come out from them, not join with them.
As concerning the tract, “Deacons: The Baptist Sacred
Cow,” deacons in this tract were never called cows. It is
the issue of deacons that is a sacred cow, not deacons
themselves. I believe you need to read the tract again because
you have missed the whole point. It dealt with the office of a
deacon, Diakonea, I Tim. 3:10-13, not the Diakonia. The whole
issue had to do with our idea of deacons today. Like for example,
there is no such thing as a Deacon Board in the Bible, nor will
you find it in past history. Jesus Christ is the head of the
church, His body, and nothing is to come between Him and His
body. I suggest you
read our tract again.
In closing might I say that our paper is not meant to be an
evangelizing tool. As stated in the first
publication, the purpose for The Pillar is to reveal the truth
and expose error. Those who are not real Baptist will not
appreciate the truth found in The Baptist Pillar.