Ecumenicalism

We used to hear a lot of good preaching about ecumenicalism, but as of late, I have not heard any--at least not in this area. What happened to the Baptist doctrine of separation? Today it seems that the popular thing to do is to unite in "brotherly love" and put away our "foolish" doctrines for the sake of getting along. Does anyone stand on his/her conviction any more? We need to get back to the traditional ("fundamental") Baptist doctrines.

Keep in mind that some man came up with the 5 or 6 "fundamentals of the faith" and that has been part of the problem. Anything basic to our Baptist heritage is a fundamental of the Baptist doctrine. We don't see anything else as all that important now because we have accepted a mans teaching that there are only a few "fundamentals" of the faith.

Another "wooden nickel" we have accepted is that "convictions are only those things you would die for". Who said so? I have some convictions that you might call preference, even though they are scripturally based; and most likely you have some that I would call personal preference too! If our convictions (beliefs) are important, and scripturally based, they are convictions! This teaching, that we only have a very few convictions, and the rest are preferences, is destroying our Baptist heritage as well, making everything else trivial and subjecting it to being cast aside as non-essential in our Christian walk. What damage we have done to the faith.

Again I ask, what happened to ecclesiastical separation? Where has marital separation gone? What about social separation? Are we not losing these doctrines that made men great in the past? Sometimes our separation needs to be among our own ranks, sadly. Let's get back to the Bible--to "Baptist", back to separation.

Haircuts for men; long pants on women; the KJB, etc. are dying doctrines nowadays, where have they gone?   Why do we want to mimic the world in action, dress, and thought?  This world has nothing for us, it is based on fleshly ideas and humanistic doctrines.  Our Bible says “Come out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6:17)