CHANGES LIBERALS ARE TRYING TO MAKE IN THE CHURCH

CHANGES LIBERALS ARE TRYING TO MAKE IN THE CHURCH

Hugo McCord

Rob McRay, preacher for the Bering Drive church in Houston, Texas, "a self-described change-agent," when asked "what changes liberals are trying to make in the church," gave this list:

1. Reject the Bible as a law book and deny that it is a blueprint or pattern.

2. Correct an overemphasis on baptism and obedience and underemphasis on grace.

3. Recognize the pious unimmersed as saved.

4. Plunge the church in to political reform avidly promoting social justice and opposing poverty and racism.

5. Reject traditional worship (5 acts) in favor of more "meaningful and relevant expressions of worship."

6. Promote some of the nine spiritual gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:8-10).

7. Give women a position of leadership in the worship and work of the church.

8. Change the organization of the church by promoting the house church--at least on Sunday and Wednesday nights. (FIRM FOUNDATION, June, 1998.)

Jay Guin, twenty year after the death of the beloved Gus Nichols (November 16, 1975), has changed what that great man of God believed about the Holy Spirit (according to William Woodson, SPIRITUAL SWORD, April, 1998):

No man in our history has more firmly upheld the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit than the late, lamented brother Gus Nichols. His well chosen words show there is not one shred of real proof that belief in the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit leads to or supports the claims about the Holy Spirit made by change agents today! Nichols wrote: "I believe the Holy Spirit dwells in me, really and actually, just as I believe my human spirit or soul dwells in me in truth and fact. Neither is miraculous. I can’t ‘feel’ either one, nor can either be found in a laboratory. Neither works any miracles through me. All I know of either of them is through the word of God. Neither gives me a single idea of religious truth not found in the Scriptures." Gus Nichols, LECTURES ON THE HOLY SPIRIT (Plainview, TX: Nichols Brothers Publishing Company, 1967) p. 176. In view of his words, the thousands of brethren who knew and loved his Christian character and appreciated his deep and precise knowledge of Scripture will be disgusted, then repelled, by the failed attempt of Jay Guin to twist Nichols’ conviction to change agent claims. Guin wrote: "After all, Nichols concluded, he had never had a vision, felt a prompting, been spoken to by God, or otherwise been noticeably affected by the Spirit’s workings. But the rest of us noticed the Spirit working in Nichols’ life. This man was one of God’s great servants, and he was too humble to see that the Holy Spirit made him too Christ-like to recognize his own example of what the Spirit can do." Jay Guin, THE HOLY SPIRIT AND REVOLUTIONARY GRACE (Private Publication, 1995), p. 35. Such folly brings no discredit to Nichols’ good name or conviction; such nonsense shows the desperate effort of change agents to uphold their failed claims!