by

James Payne

(Although somewhat dated, the content of this article finds application for today’s Christian.)

[Printed for Watching and Waiting, Vol. 20, 1974-1976]

The Lord throughout the Scriptures of Truth enjoins His people to be separate from both persons and institutions which dishonor Him and He has repeatedly shown the evils which arise through the neglect of this injunction.

He called Abram out from Ur of the Chaldees and from all the corruption of the Babylonian system and its idolatrous practices and appointed him to be a stranger and a sojourner in the land which he was afterwards to inherit. When his servants and the servants of his nephew Lot quarreled, he suggested separation and gave to Lot the choice as to place of residence. Lot chose the plain of Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom. Before very long he was resident in Sodom. He sat in the gate among the elders of the city who were “wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly”. Although Lot’s righteous soul was “vexed from day to day with the filthy conversation of the wicked” yet he remained among them, buying and selling and planting and building (Luke 17:28). Thus mingling with them and descending to their level, his testimony concerning Jehovah (if any) was totally ineffective. His daughters married men of Sodom and when the time came for Lot to speak of Divine judgment he was “as one that mocked to his sons-in-law.”

How different was the testimony of Abram! When pressed to receive of the goods of Sodom, he declared to its king, “I will not take anything that is thine lest thou shouldest say ‘I have made Abram rich.’” Abraham’s testimony both in what he did and said whilst separate from Sodom was far more glorifying to God than Lot’s feeble testimony from within. Moreover Lot’s sinful association with the people of Sodom cost him his wife and two daughters and all his possessions; and his descendents through the incest of his other daughters were a plague to the Children of Israel throughout their national history. All these evils followed because of Lot’s failure to remain separate from the ungodly Sodomites.

Many years later Jacob pitched his tent before a city of Shechem and began to barter with the inhabitants of the city, while his daughter mingled with them. The result was fornication and a desire on the part of the Shechemites for inter-marriage. This led to deceit and carnage on the part of two of Jacob’s sons, which made Jacob “stink among the inhabitants of the land; among the Canaanites and the Perizzites.” The Lord in His mercy, however delivered Jacob from a very dangerous situation, the outcome of his own folly.

When the Children of Israel came out of Egypt the Lord gave them this command, “Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars and break their pillars and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods and destroy the names of them out of that place.” (Deut. 12: 2 and 3). This command was repeated again and again but was not obeyed. In the early days of the Judges, the Lord said, “I made you go up out of Egypt and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers, and I said ‘I will never break My covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed My voice: why have ye done this’?” The failure to obey this command brought the Lord’s hand in judgment upon them time and again so that through the time of the Judges— upwards of 400 years—174 years of this period were served in bondage to other peoples because of the failure of Israel to keep themselves separate from the nations and their gods.

Through Moses the Lord said to His people, “I am Jehovah your God which have separated you from other people . . . Ye shall be holy unto Me: for I the Lord am holy and have severed you from other people that ye should be Mine (Lev. 20: 24 and 26). His further command was, “Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their pictures and destroy all their molten images and quite pluck down all their high places” (Num. 33:52). There was to be no mingling of worship whatsoever. When this command was obeyed the people prospered; when it was disobeyed, judgment fell. How often do we read even in the reign of God-fearing kings, “But the high places were not taken away out of Israel”! And alas! On the few occasions on which some were removed by zealous reformers, they were again re-instated by other ungodly kings.

Solomon, a man beloved of God, in his old age built high places for heathen gods to satisfy the desire of his wives. What dreadful consequences followed this action by a Godly man! It was because of this that the kingdom of Israel was rent in twain and never again united until they were in captivity in a strange land.

Not until the days of Josiah were the high places which Solomon built removed. They stood as an affront to Jehovah for some 360 years.

Jehoshaphat, a Godly king, who was a preacher of the Word of God to his people, nevertheless joined affinity with Ahab, the most wicked king to sit on the throne of Israel. He joined Ahab in battle and was content to see God’s faithful prophet Micaiah sent to prison, without a word of protest. The result of this affinity was that Jehoshaphat’s son “fell in love” with Ahab’s daughter who eventually murdered all her grand-children save Joash who escaped. Jehoshaphat’s failure to keep separate from Ahab resulted in chaos and confusion in his kingdom for some 20 years until Athaliah his daughter-in-law was slain. How jealous we should be that no action of ours should bring trouble and sorrow upon future generations!

Because of the constant failure of the Children of Israel to separate from that which was an abomination to Jehovah, they were eventually given into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and taken into captivity.

“The things which were written aforetime were written for our learning” and Paul says of the idolatry of Israel, “All these things happened to them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:11 and 12). How needful then is the Apostle’s injunction, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of God; as God hath said ‘I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people’. Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:14-18).

In the well-known Auburn Affirmation of the Presbyterian body in the U.S.A. it was stated concerning certain fundamental doctrines of the Gospel that “whereas many of us personally accept these doctrines . . . we still believe that we may have warm fellowship with those who repudiate them”. This, of course, opened the door to all the apostasy which subsequently inundated the Presbyterian General Assembly. The failure to separate from the unbelievers brought in a flood of unbelief, in accordance with the Apostle’s prediction, “Of your own selves shall men arise teaching perverse things and shall draw away disciples after them.”

When in 1823 there were those among the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists who queried the words “and those only” in their confession of faith which said, “It was ordained that His (Christ’s) person should stand in the stead of those persons (and those only) who had been given Him to redeem”, a compromise was reached in the explanation then given of the words in the confession. The objectors were allowed to remain and in 1875 they were placated by an appended note which said “That while we do not wish to make any alteration in what is stated in this article concerning the substitution of the Person of the Mediator in the stead of those who were given Him by the Father, we think it necessary to call attention to the opposite truth concerning the infinite sufficiency of the atonement, as it is set forth in the hymns of Williams of Pant-y-celyn and in the writings of Charles of Bala and Jones of Denbigh”. It will be seen here that there is no reference to Scripture. The authority for the appendix was not the Scriptures of Truth but the hymns and writings of men, who, it is admitted, proclaim an “opposite truth” (?) to that first stated in the confession.

Thus the leaven was allowed to remain instead of being purged out, the result being that nearly 60 years later in 1933, the confession of faith was “effectively relegated to the status of a theological museum-piece” by the influx of liberalism and a false ecumenism (Evangelical Library Bulletin, Winter 1973). How true are the words of the Apostle “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”

Much the same thing has been evidenced in all the denominations associated with the World Council of Churches. The equality of all the world faiths — Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity was taught in Masonic Lodges 150 years ago and Masons were allowed to remain in nearly all the denominations. Instead of being separated they continued to infiltrate and in some cases inundate the denominations so that now, in the official publications of the British Council of Churches and the W.C.C. the same “damnable heresies” are plainly taught.

The clarion call of the Scripture abides, “come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”

The Gospel Witness recently carried an article with the above title, from which we quote the following, “You can never save one who is sinking to his death in quicksand by jumping in with him, nor can you ever pull someone out of a deep pit by going in and joining him. You can do these things only while you stay on firm ground. . . .

“Many young people nowadays can be recognized by their clothing, their guitar, their hairdo (or lack of it) and their language. Therein they show and utter a protest against “the establishment”. How wrong it would be if we should approach them in the same clothing, strumming the same guitar, having the same hairdo and addressing them in the same language! What we bring is on a different level and is not at all a message of protest nor, for that matter, of defence. What they long to hear is not the same expressions they have been using but something different; something that will lift them out of the mess and their misery.

“Sometimes churches where attendance is dwindling take refuge in all sorts of gimmicks to get young and old back to what they call a “service”. The regular order of worship is then replaced by the singing of all sorts of modern songs and extracts from blasphemous rock-operas; boys and girls deliver speeches in the language of the street to be more readily acceptable to eventual visitors. But there is no place for an authoritative preaching of the Gospel. The Christ of the Scriptures is not brought.

“We can never save anyone by lowering ourselves to his level. In such a case it cannot be seen that we are different. We should show that we are different, indeed, and such not for the sake of being different but because the Spirit of Christ changes people and brings about a difference.

“You can pull people up only when you stay on the level to which God has elevated you. And you can do so only by the sword of the Spirit which is God’s own Word, not by adulterated editions which incorporate thoughts of an un-Scriptural theology in order to render them more acceptable to natural man”.

“Lord strengthen me that while I stand
Firm on the Rock and strong in Thee;
I may stretch out a loving hand
To wrestlers with the troubled sea.”

“Jesus Thou didst shed Thy blood:
On this rock our hope we raise;
Thou hast brought us near to God:
Thine the work and Thine the praise.

‘Tis Thy will that we should be
Separate from all around;
Let our will with Thine agree,
Let Thy people thus be found.”

Providence Baptist Ministries © 2006
PBM Desktop Publications © 2006
All rights reserved
Revised: February 14, 2005