Baptist Distinctives: Baptist Heritage

If you in your Bibles turn to two Timothy tonight, our theme verse for our study on the Baptist distinctives. We'll use that tonight as our verse springboard into the subject. Second Timothy, chapter two and verse two.

Again, the Baptist distinctives are a collection of biblical truths unique to Baptists. Doesn't mean that there's not other churches or other groups out there that teach some or most of these Bible doctrines, these Bible teachings.

But what makes it unique is that collectively these biblical truths have historically been taught, preached, believed by Baptist churches. There are some other churches. I was doing some reading today just kind of clarifying what other denominations others believe.

And interesting to look at those. There are many, there are several denominations they may not call themselves a denomination that believe very closely.

One of those is most Bible churches. Most Bible churches believe very close to what Baptists have historically believed.

And now we call a lot of churches out there that don't have Baptists on their name, we call them Baptistic. You they're afraid of the Baptist label. They're in hiding Baptists, they're in the closet, they're in the shadows.

They're now afraid of calling themselves Baptists. So they don't want to put it on their sign because they believe it's going to scare people away. I'm just so thankful for my Baptist heritage.

I'm thankful for those who paved the way, those who gave the many millions of Baptists who gave their lives for what we believe in. And so just, just proud to be a Baptist again.

As I say that, I clarify and say some Baptists are so hard line, so hard nosed, they're going to be so surprised when they get to heaven and see, you know, Lutherans there, Methodists there, even Catholics, those who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and don't put their faith in the church or the Pope, but they put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection.

Amen.

They go to heaven, they don't have to be a Baptist.

And so but I do believe, as I've clarified many times, that Baptist historic Baptist doctrine is as close to Bible doctrine, any denomination or any churches that are there in existence today on the world map. If I thought there was another church, a group that was closer, I would be that I believe Baptists are not Protestants.

I believe Baptists went through the Dark Ages, went through the Reformation and have been in existence since the founding of the church by Jesus Christ himself. And so I believe that, by the way, I believe I can back that up historically.

And we've talked about that and looking forward to Heritage Day this year. Brother Locke's going to be with us. He is the former pastor of Lake Worth Baptist Church.

In fact, our storefront was just a few blocks away from that church when we were meeting there. And Brother Locke's going to be here and he's going to preached to us on being a Baptist and what that means historically and so forth.

So looking forward to that. Second Timothy, chapter two, verse two.

Paul says to Timothy, the things that thou has heard, and I told you ought to circle or underline the word things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same. And I would underline the word same, commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

We are to take the things, the doctrines, the teachings that we have been taught that we have heard, and we are to pass those same doctrines on to the next generation. We don't have the right to change them.

We don't have the right to change the mode of baptism from immersion, which that's the only mode of baptism the Bible teaches in the New Testament. We don't have the right to change it from immersion to sprinkle or to pour. We don't have the right to change it from believers.

Only baptism, that is that you have to accept Christ as your Savior first, and then you are baptized. It's not that you baptize a child when they're a little kid or when they're not a little kid, but when they're a baby.

That sprinkling or that pouring of that baby with some water by a priest doesn't get them to heaven. It doesn't. Now the age of accountability will. And that's a whole nother teaching.

One of the easiest ways to describe that is when David said of the baby that died that he had with Bathsheba, I will see you in heaven. David said that. King David said that. So we know there is an age of accountability. But baptism doesn't get you to heaven.

Don't matter how many times you sprinkle, pour, you know, drip on somebody, you know, tidal wave on the shoreline, whatever else, none of that sending you to heaven. The things which thou hast heard of me, among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others.

Also, review is the best teacher. So everybody, most of you should have this sheet. Maybe not all of you, but some of you. But if you don't have it, just listen.

These are the things we've covered. All right? So here's the doctrines we've covered 12 Brother Stewart. These are loosely based on his studies.

And those sheets that I passed out are definitely Brother Stewart. You can see that right off. But my messages have been loosely based on his lessons and I've given him credit all along.

But I do want to clarify again as I'm.

This is the last lesson, so I'm doing some clarification that if you were to type in Baptist distinctives to Google, you're going to bring up a lot of different ones. And Brother Stewart, he, he parses out some of them. In other words, he divides out some of them.

If you look them up, most of the theologians and those who are considered way smarter than me and smarter than everybody else anyway, they usually have eight. So anywhere from eight to 12 Baptist distinctives. All right?

And if there's 12, it just means that he, again, he's just parsing out some of the others and making them more individual. Am I making any sense? I'm not making sense to myself. Alright, so look at these.

So number one is the Scripture is a sole, absolute, full, sufficient and final rule of faith. I didn't use that exact wording, but I said the Bible is the final authority for our faith and practice. The Bible, the word of God.

This is the final authority not only for what we believe, but what we practice. Because what you believe really is only as good as what you practice.

Alright, so what you think is what you do, what you believe, what you truly believe is what you do.

Amen.

And so that's what it is for faith and practice. By the way, I believe the King James Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, the very word of God in the English language.

I believe that because the King James Bible is an honest translation. Are you saying the others aren't? I'm saying the others were many. Most all. Almost all. Maybe all motivated by money. By money.

The ones being produced today are motivated by money and many other things. But anyway, why do I believe the King James Bible to be the inspired, inerrant word of God? Because the translators were superior.

The translators of the King James Bible were superior of the translators of today. I believe the King James Bible to be the inspired, inert word of God. Not only that, because that the text is superior.

In other words, the text that the translators translated from is superior than to text that many and actually all the new translations draw from. There are corrupt.

There are corrupt texts out there and you have to be able to, you have to be able to have some wisdom there to divide those out of the texts. We call it the received text or the Texas Receptus. Of those texts, there are 5,300 either parcels of text or full text that are still among us.

By the way, there are no original texts left.

So when you read somebody, you read a church's articles of faith on their website, and maybe you're moving and you're trying to decide what church you want to be a part of.

One of the things I would look for on their website is do they say on their articles of faith that the Bible's the inspired, inerrant word of God in the original language? If they do that, I wouldn't go there.

Or at least I would get some clarification because I would ask them, I would ask their pastor, do you believe there's some original text still around? The answer is no, there's no original text around. So do you believe the inspiration of God that the Bible perished?

Then it's a whole study again, the texts are superior, the text in which it was translated. And number one, number three, the. Not only that, but the. And there's another T that I'm forgetting here.

It was at its peak when Shakespeare was writing and many of these others were writing. I mean, the English language was more solid, solidified. Hot meant hot, cold meant cold. There wasn't, you know, 3,000 definitions for one word.

It was just more fixed as the English language. And there's many other things that I could say. So that's my brief, very brief explanation of why we use the King James Bible.

So the Bible is the final authority. Number two, salvation by grace through faith only in the life and death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Right.

Salvation is by grace, through faith in the works of Jesus Christ. All right, so that's number two. Number three, I'm going to follow along with you. Number three is eternal security of the believer.

We believe the Bible teaches once you're saved, you're always saved. And we went through that and understanding that you can't lose your salvation, you can't lose your salvation.

I want to stop and camp out some of these, but I need to move on. Number four, soul liberty and competency. Again, we are all as human beings, personally accountable to God.

We will all stand, the Bible says, before the judgment, seat of Christ. So if we're personally accountable, then we have soul liberty. God did not create us as robots, we have a free will.

We have the will to worship or not worship Him. We have the choice. So again, soul, liberty and competence. In other words, I can't save my kids. I can't give them eternal life.

They don't inherit it from me. I can't make that choice for them either.

They have to get to the age in which they can make a personal decision to trust Christ as their Savior themselves.

Amen.

Number five. Separate and equal priesthood of all believers. Of all believers. Again, it's a privilege to be a priest. We are all.

All those who are saved are priests. The Bible says. We are a royal priesthood. The Bible says it also calls us a peculiar people. But we are a priesthood. We are priests.

You don't have to go to someone else in order to go to God. No, Jesus is the mediator between God and man. The man Christ Jesus. We have one mediator, not two, not three.

And so you have every privilege and right to go directly to God, as I do, as any person does. You don't need someone sitting in a little telephone booth to confess your sins to. No, you go straight to the Father yourself.

I'm thankful I have a heavenly Father. I go to him and I confess my sins.

He says in First John, if I confess my sins, he's faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Doesn't tell me to go to someone else. Sure, you can come to your pastor.

You can come to a spiritual leader in your church or whatever and talk through some things and get help. But listen, when it comes to confessing sins, it's go to the Father, go to the Father yourselves. Number six, One kind of biblical church.

And boy, we spent three weeks on that and we have hammered that the last 25 years. The Bible only teaches a local visible church. Local visible church. Some of y' all came to me Sunday night after the missionary preached. Sunday night.

By the way, he did a fantastic job. I loved hearing his kids sing with him. Wasn't that fantastic?

And to think he had brain cancer and went through the surgeries and some of y' all weren't here. So some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. But you said two or three of you. But I'm so impressed.

Came up to me afterwards and said, preacher, he believes in universal Church, doesn't he? I said, yes, he does. Yes, he does. I'm glad you caught that. And so you say, well, man, if he believes in universal Church, no, it's okay. Alright.

Lots of. Again, there's a lot of Protestant influence among Baptists.

A lot of Baptists now believe in the universal invisible church, that all the saved are the church. Well, the Bible doesn't teach that. It does teach all the saved are the family of God. And I'm thankful to be part of the family of God, aren't you?

Amen. And so the feather Lutheran or Methodist or whomever, non denominational, any of those who have trusted Christ as their savior.

Yes, we're a part of the family of God together and we ought to be kind to each other and love each other as family, but not a part of the church. Invisible church. Okay, so one kind of biblical church, local and visible. Number seven, saved and scripturally baptized church membership.

You say, well, that should just take that for granted. No, now, not all churches believe that and practice that.

So in order for you to be a member of Heritage Baptist Church, you have to have been scripturally baptized, right? Scripturally baptized. That means if you've been poured, sprinkled, any of those, you need to be baptized again in order to be a member of our church.

If you were baptized in a church that doesn't believe in salvation by grace through faith and faith alone, then the Bible biblically makes them. They don't have the authority that baptism was not within the right authority. Right.

So again, there's lots of things here, but one kind of church, one scripturally saved baptized church membership, and you can look there, underneath there, he gives you some verses and things you can look up yourself. Okay, number eight. Only two ordinances, Baptism in the Lord's Supper. Both are symbolic. I'm going to use a big word for you.

None of them are efficacious, none of them save none of them extend grace to anybody. Everybody. See, taking a wafer in your mouth and given to you by a priest doesn't give you eternal life.

Amen.

Drinking from the same cup, which whatever you go by doesn't save you that juice or that wine or that bread has no saving power because salvation is by grace through faith and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So again, there are two ordinances.

And we also clarified there's not three ordinances, not four, though there are some who practice foot washing as an ordinance. There you go. How many y' all want to be that do that? Nobody. Okay, number nine.

Only two offices in a church pastor, which again, the label pastor, elder, bishop, are the same office. And those are misused and abused. Those other two titles, elder and bishop, they all are Referring to the same office, the pastor of the church.

And then the other office is deacon. And these are the only two offices. There's nothing. Three, four, five and six offices. Church, in other words, biblical offices.

We do have practical offices that we as a church have voted to have. It's not wrong to do that. But we have, you know, trustees, we have a treasurer. And so. But the biblical offices are pastor and deacon. Number nine.

I'll show what I already said. Number ten. I have them out of order on my page. And then I went back and put them in the same order that you guys have them on the sheet. Number 10.

Self supporting, self governing churches. Again, churches are to be self supporting through the tithes and offerings of the membership.

And that's why I remember years ago when we started the fall fest, we used to do a raffle at the fall fest where we made up these really nice baskets and we'd have businesses give products and we would make nice baskets out of them and then we'd have a raffle to raffle off these baskets. I had many people come to me and say, pastor, that's wrong.

Either they would say that's gambling, or they would say, you know, the church is to be supported by the membership and its tithes and offerings. And so I kind of let it run off like a water on a duck's back because it was just fun. And all those stuff was given to us anyway.

But I do believe we have to be careful again, it's not a matter of having a garage sale or some other thing or some other fundraiser. Know that it's supposed to be through the tithes and offerings of the church membership and self supporting, self governing.

And we talked about this at length that there, the Bible does not teach about a hierarchy outside the church that has control of the churches, that the churches are to be self governing, self governing again, under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ through his word, because he is the head of the church and he governs the church through His Word. And then the under shepherd, we talk about the deacons and the membership. It is a limited democracy. It's not churches.

This is not a pure democracy because we are governed by this, right? So it's not a pure democracy and self supporting, self governing. The next1, number 11 is self propagating churches.

So if you look there at 11 on this sheet, it says sending missionaries to the nations of the world and to start churches is what Christ commissioned the churches to do. That's propagating, that's getting the message out giving the good news, out, giving the gospel out.

That's the commission that Christ gave the church and we are to fulfill that commission. It's our marching orders. We're soldiers of the cross. We're to be fulfilling the commands of our commander in chief, which is Jesus Christ.

And only churches that are propagating the gospel are fully, by definition churches.

And so the number one goal, the number one purpose of a church is to spread the gospel locally, you know, throughout the region and then to all the world. We ought to be working. The thing we work hardest at as a church should be spreading the gospel.

The thing we spend the most money at should be spreading the gospel. The thing we do the most is spreading the gospel. Everything we do is connected to it.

Amen.

I enjoy fellowship. I enjoy yalls cooking. I do. I enjoy a good Baptist dinner, good Baptist supper. I enjoy that dinner's lunch.

By the way, those two whole nother controversy, it's called the Lord's supper in the Bible. Just to let you know. I love fellowship. I love it. But it's not the primary purpose of a church.

Primary purpose is to tell people about the gospel, to give them the good news. And of course fellowship is a part of the church's purpose as it is up on the side as we think about.

I gave you these and the last one is tonight, which we're going to touch on briefly because it's more, it's connected to the, it's connected more to number four, soul liberty and competency. It's connected to a couple of the others that we've already mentioned and that is separation of church and state.

Can you imagine that being told what kind of church you can have in your community and then told where you could attend and then your taxes went to that whether you believed in what they were teaching or not. And this was happening in America and of course Europe and other places. And so every believer, every believer has equal priesthood.

That each of us has equal are equal before the Lord. That no one has more authority over another individual, that no one has an authority over another individual except the Lord.

Everybody with me, but nobody has authority over another church as well. We just again, these are all connected. So we believe that churches should be self governing.

Again, there's no outside authority telling that church what to do.

Amen.

So you can't have the government telling the church what to do and line up biblically.

And so the government, no authority over the church, no control over the church by outside sources, government, other churches, whichever that may be, that there can be voluntary, according to the Bible, voluntary cooperation, but never by force.

In other words, we as independent Baptists especially, there should be no outside force telling the church what to do, no government telling the church what to do. This is biblical, but we can of course, voluntarily fellowship with others.

Worth Baptist Church, Fort Worth, that we had a Wednesday night service together and fellowshipping together, supporting churches that support these missionaries.

If you go out into this hallway and walk down there and look at all the missionary letters, you'll find those missionaries usually are supported by 50 to 100 churches that are voluntarily cooperating together to put a missionary on the field. But nobody forced any of those churches to support that missionary. Each one of those churches decided individually to support that missionary.

Amen.

That is what we're talking about, separation of church and state. The Roman Catholic Church emerged in the three hundreds, though they would say Peter was the first Pope.

again, the Catholic Church believed in the universal, visible church. They believed they were the replacement Israel, that they were the church that replaced Israel.

They adopted a high priestly figure, just like in the Old Testament. So they took some of the Old Testament and adopted some of those things.

The Pope is kind of the, again, adaptation of the high priests in the Old Testament. Again, we think about the wedding of the church and the state together. The Catholic Church wed the state and church together.

The government was the Catholic Church. The Catholic clerk was the church. The government, they were wed together. You were Catholic and that's all you could be or face the consequences.

Well, what happened was many of these, you know, their clergy, their priests began to get access to the Greek manuscripts and not just the Latin Vulgate, the Latin vulgate, which is the Catholic Bible. They began to get access to the Greek manuscripts and guess what? It taught different than what the Latin vulgate, which was very, very corrupt.

And they began to read, and Luther began to read the Book of Romans. He got saved. And once he got saved, man, his eyes were open and you began to see this great reformation take place.

And though there was some, by the way, it wasn't just the manuscripts either. There was a lot of corruption in the church, in the Catholic Church at that time, too. I mean, like gross, absolutely gross corruption.

And it was appalling to many of the priests that were in the Catholic Church. And they began to kick back and all that kind of happened together as they began to see the corruption that was happening in the church.

But having access to the clear scriptures, we saw many of the priests get saved and the Protestants as they protested, these men who protested became protested, or Protestants got a lot right. But universal, invisible. Also universal. Instead of a universal, visible church as we've already preached on, it became a universal, invisible church.

Well, they didn't leave all the baggage behind of the Catholic Church. The universal, invisible church became the state church.

So then you had the Lutheran Church become a state church or whatever, the Church of England a state church. And so you had these put in places instead of the Catholic Church.

But it was in some instances just as much persecution taking place as the Catholic Church was doing. In other words, they were forced to attend these churches, these state churches.

So Baptists, called by other names throughout history, whether that was Montanist or Waldensians or Paulicians, separatists, Anabaptists, many other names. And some of these even there were different offshoots of.

Came through the Dark ages, as I said, came through the Protestant Reformation and were persecuted by the way, persecuted by Rome, but then persecuted by the Protestants. And that's why I gave you this, this other pamphlet.

John Clark, who is in our Heritage hall of Fame over here on this side, the First Baptist Church, really. And there's some debate whether it's John Clark or Roger Williams, but John Clark, the first true Baptist pastor in America.

If you go through and you read, you'll see it says that while these three men, John Clark, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, who represented the Baptist churches in Newport, Rhode island, while they were expounding the scriptures, they were arrested by two constables. They were watched over that night in the ordinary as thieves and robbers by the officers.

And on the second day they were lodged in the common jail in Boston. On July 31, they were brought to public trial in Boston without trial by jury and at the will of the magistrates.

Governor Edencott charged them with being Anabaptist. Clark replied that he was neither an Anabaptist nor a paedobaptist nor a catabaptist. And you can look all those up at this reply.

The Governor stepped up. In other words, they would not baptize babies. Right. So John Clark, I'm not baptizing babies. And these the Baptists there stood for, right.

And he said, and I told us, we denied infant baptism and being somewhat transported, told me I had deserved death and said he would not next page, have such trash brought into his jurisdiction because they believe you shouldn't baptize babies, that baptizing babies doesn't get into heaven. These Baptists were called trash by the governor.

Moreover, he said, you go up and down and secretly insinuate into those that are weak, but you cannot maintain it before our ministers. You may try and dispute with them. So he basically challenges John Clark and says, okay, tell you what we'll do.

We'll have you debate one of our ministers. Well, he doesn't follow through. So Clark was about to make a reply. They were remanded to prison. I'm skipping around if you're trying to follow me.

As I went from the bar, he said, so as he left the judgment hall, I expressed myself in these words. I bless God. I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. Whereupon John Wilson, their pastor.

All right, so the Protestant pastor, as they call him, struck me, hit him before the judgment seat and cursed me and saying the curse of God or Jesus go with thee from prison. Clark accepted the proposition to debate the subject, but it wasn't given that. So let me go, I'm going to skip down.

Clark and Crandall were not long after were released. Listen to this. Upon the payment of their fines by some tender hearted friend without their consent.

So somebody paid for their fine so they could be released, the three of them. But listen, Holmes, not accepting deliverance, was publicly whipped. Holmes said, no, I did nothing wrong. This is, I'm not accepting to be released.

And so he was whipped severely. In fact, if you look down the next paragraph, he was whipped 30, with 30.

He was whipped, was whipped 30 stripes, in other words, 30 times in such an unmerciful manner that in many days, if not some weeks he could not take, he could take no rest.

But as he lay on his knees and elbows, he laid on his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed wherein he lay.

The trial, the last paragraph there on that page, the trial and the whipping of Holmes was the occasion of the conversion of Henry Dunster, the president of Harvard. That's the effect Holmes had on him to be Baptist. Isn't that cool?

What's not cool is as I've said before we talk about the persecution that happened in Europe by the Roman Catholic Church, but there were many Baptists in America who were also persecuted by Protestants and killed, by the way, martyred, especially down in Florida. You can go read about all this. It's nothing hidden. It's not secret. You can read about it. And it was really.

If you read the rest of this little pamphlet Brother Stewart has, you'll see where Rhode island.

The churches, the Baptist churches of Rhode island had a significant part in influencing our Constitution and Bill of Rights for our freedom, that we have to worship as our own conscience dictates. It was Baptist who influenced Jefferson and many. George Washington and many of the others. It was Baptist.

And that, by the way, that's easy also to find in history. It's not like, well, you're just a Baptist, so you're going to say that. Go read it. It's very clearly the truth.

It was Baptists who had that influence. I want to encourage you tonight, take these couple things home. You can read them. It gives you references there as well.

But the things that thou has heard of me, among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men. We are the churches, are the caretakers of biblical truth. And we need to stand firm and never waver.

There are so many today who have wavered, who have drifted and compromised. You say, well, what does it matter? What does it really matter? Well, doctrine shapes our thinking and therefore our doing.

What we believe will shape what we do. And if your thinking is off, if your understanding of scripture is off, then the doing will also be shaped by that.

So doctrine shapes our thinking and therefore our doing. It protects us from doing wrongly. All doctrines are dependent on other. They're interdependent on each other, they rest on each other.

They affect each other. You get off on one doctrine, it will affect the others.

And we see this very much in the modern church that if they're off on the local church, it will affect the way they do missions or affect the way. There are a lot of modern churches today who have gotten away from reaching the world and just reaching specific people.

It's kind of what you think about when you think about a biker church or cowboy church or again, our job isn't to reach one. Our job is to reach all. I'm sorry I mentioned a cowboy church and so get in trouble. They're good people.

A lot of cowboy churches are Baptistic, but doesn't make it right. We're to reach everybody. Another example would be churches in the modern era.

And a lot of Baptist churches who've done this have gone from supporting a plethora of missionaries to many different countries to maybe supporting one or two missionaries only and just concentrating on that missionary or that field. Well, that's not what the Bible says. It says to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Well, we can have a bigger impact if we concentrate on, you know, this particular missionary in India who has this big school who can reach this many people, and if we just spend all our money with him, we can have a bigger impact. That's not what the Bible says. Bible says go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

It should be our goal to get into every country. And that is our goal. That is our goal. I told me and Brother Stone we're talking about today.

It's amazing how many missionaries have come off the field in the last few years. And we have stayed around that hundred foreign missionaries, but right now I think we're down to 91.

We've had missionaries come off the field, and we'll add four or five new ones next year, and our basis for that will be, hey, is there any of our kind of missionaries in the field? We don't have yet. We want to try to do our best to get in another country.

Amen.

Amen. I want to get in another country. Let's reach them. And so we want to continue that with that Bible frame of mind.

Satan attacks biblical truth and teachings and doctrines because he seeks to destroy God's work. God does not lie. Sorry. God has a purpose for our church. He's commissioned our church. Satan hates it.

Satan wants to take as many people to hell as he can with him, as many people as he can. And he will do everything he can to discourage and distort truth, to get a church sidetracked.

And most churches today, and I believe that's absolutely true, most churches are sidetracked today. They've deterred from their purpose. And let us never compromise. Let us stand our ground. Let us stand firm in the faith. Quit ye like men.

Be good soldiers of the cross. Continue with purpose to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Being a good steward of God's word. Being a good steward of God's word.

I'll end with this, but I'm thankful we can rejoice with all believers. I want to make that clear. We're not out to get anybody. I've said it many times. We're independent Baptists. I'm independent Baptists.

I'm just not mad about it. Some people are Baptists and they're just mad about it.

There are a lot of others that don't have Baptists on their name who are giving the gospel and spreading the gospel. Thank the Lord for that. There are other believers and other.

There are others who have trusted Christ as their Savior and other churches who may not have Baptists on their name. And they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Praise the Lord for that. Amen.

Amen.

But just because they're our brothers and sisters are Christ, and we can rejoice with all believers, but beware of the doctrinal differences. Just because we are believers, we are part of the family of God, doesn't mean we compromise.

When it comes to doctrine, when it comes to the Bible and what it teaches, we stand firm.

Amen.

Amen. Let's all stand. We have a verse invitation, the end of a series. We actually finished one.

Sometimes with my add, we kind of get off, you know, we'll stay on one for a while, then get sidetracked and we finished one. These are so important as time goes on that we stand firm. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the Bible, your word.

I pray God that we continue to stand on your biblical truths and not compromise. Lord, may we also do that in a way that is loving and kind. May we preach the truth in love as you've stated. Lord, may we continue to hold the fort.

May we continue to not let things slip. May we continue to stand firm until you return in Jesus name. Amen.