Sermon Preached in 1926 by Earle V. Pierce, D. D.
"If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? "Psalm 11:3.
WE HAVE GIVEN TO US in the Bible three commandments concerning three different situations in which the Christian will find himself. First, we have Jesus' command to His disciples: "Go and disciple (i.e. evangelize) the nations." Go and give men the Gospel.But in giving the Gospel, you will meet with men from without who will resist you and will persecute you. Peter, in his first letter, third chapter and fifteenth verse, after speaking about suffering for righteousness' sake, says: "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." So, in giving your Gospel, if men persecute you, accept it and never be cowardly enough to refuse to confess your faith, if you are asked, even though that means further persecution.There are not only people without the Gospel and people outside of the church who are enemies of the Gospel, but, through the subtlety of Satan, men will appear within the church who are its enemies because they deny Christ as the redeeming, atoning Lord—the Lord who purchased them with His own blood. This is the touchstone of error—that the atoning blood of Jesus is denied. Against these we are told to contend, to fight. Jude, the brother of the Lord, says in verses three and four of his epistle: "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." Here, then, you have the Christian program: (1) the offer of the Gospel to all who will take it; (2) the attitude of meekness toward non-Christians who persecute you; but (3) war on those who from within the sacred precincts of the Church seek to destroy the Faith. Those who accept this whole program are today called "Fundamentalists." If I shall be able to show you what a Fundamentalist is, you will know why I am one. A Fundamentalist is one who believes...
There Are Foundations
The word "Fundamentalist" is a new word in the religious world. It is a recent name. Names are necessary. They are symbols of ideas. It is not the best thing in the world to be nameless. There are some people who object to being branded. They say they will not carry labels. But labels are also necessary, and the absence of them may be embarrassing, as when a goat was being shipped by express with a tag of destination about his neck. Later, the man in charge of the shipping car was thrown into consternation because he found, as he declared with wide-eyed astonishment and perplexity, "That goat ate up where he is going!" Probably the goat was a Modernist or a Conservative who refused to wear a label! But it bothered the man in charge of shipping the goat and it bothers us today not to know definitely where people are going and with whom they are going.
Some Important Definitions
But if the word "Fundamentalist" needs to be clearly understood, so also does the word "Conservative."
A "Conservative" is, properly, "one who believes in conserving what has been gained." He is not a spendthrift. He believes that the present is the product of the past and that you cannot throw away the past without destroying the present. He believes he should "prove all things and holdfast that which is good."
A "Progressive" is one who would leave the past and all it contains, looking only to the present and the future, willing to make new tools day by day. His virtue is that he welcomes the useful new; his vice is that he despises the tested past. He repudiates the "static" and wants only the "dynamic," forgetting that no man can have power who does not have something to stand on. How fast would the train go if the roadbed were not "static"?
"Liberals" are those who would be a law unto themselves. They object to any authority except that which emanates from or through themselves. Especially do they object to the authority of the Word of God.
"Rationalists" are those who would settle everything by the unaided, unenlightened human reason. They do not need divine revelation. They must find everything for themselves. They deny revelation in the sense that the Bible teaches it.
"Materialists" believe only in the forces of the physical world. They deny the supernatural, the superphysical.
"Modernists" are those who believe that in modern times we have information that utterly discredits that of former times concerning God and man, sin and salvation, and the Bible. The Christian Century, a liberal paper, is right in saying, "There is a clash here (i.e. between Fundamentalism and Modernism) as profound and as grim as between Christianity and Confucianism. Amiable words cannot hide the difference."A Fundamentalist is, then, first of all, one who believes that there are foundations. He believes that this is an orderly universe, that law prevails in the very constitution of things. He believes that there is a constitution. He believes that the past conditions the present and the present, the future. He insists that while there are many things of a transient and more or less non-essential nature, there are certain elements that have originated in the past and are so germinal that they cannot be discarded without denaturing the organism.When I was a mere boy, my father taught me that there were six mechanical principles, and only six, and I have remembered them by the rhyme he gave us:
"There are the lever, the pulley,The inclined plane, too;The wheel on its axle,The wedge and the screw."
Will you tell me how far a man would get in building, or in any form of mechanics, who was not Fundamentalist enough to accept these principles and work in accordance with them?You will find the mathematical world full of Fundamentalists. They will tell you that there are certain axioms, self-evident principles, that are at the bottom of all calculations. They will insist that the multiplication table is as bright and new as when it was first invented, or discovered, that it does not need any revising and that one need not be ashamed of believing in it because it dates back even beyond the time of Moses.Many of us are also Fundamentalists in government. We believe that there are foundations in government. One of our axioms is: "Government gets its just rights from the consent of the governed." Our constitution is important! Abraham Lincoln was a Fundamentalist in government. He staked everything upon the Constitution. He stated at Gettysburg that we were then "engaged in a conflict to test whether our nation, or any nation so constituted, could endure," that is, whether we would abide by the laws of our own making. Are we not convinced today that he was right? Are we not, as a nation, face to face with the problem again? Will we obey our laws? Will the foundation stand?
Foundation Facts
But what are the foundation facts in Christianity? That is the question. They will be, will they not, those which Christianity itself declares to be Fundamental? The fundamentals of the Bible will be what the Bible itself declares to be fundamental and essential. Modern Fundamentalists merely stand for those things which the Bible insists upon. It is not hard to find these. The teachings of the Bible concerning itself, concerning God, man, sin and salvation, Christ, His person and His work are as plain as the daylight itself to anyone who will look into the Bible. It is not a question as to what you find in the Bible that causes division, but whether the things which are found are essential to a true faith and to salvation.Fundamentalists are those who declare that the Bible has the right to declare its own foundations, that Christianity is what it claims to be and not something else, that the salvation of the Bible is not subject to the revision of men. But Modernism is gradually and rapidly drifting to the position of postulating as Christianity something which has not the remotest connection with Christ. This seems too strange for a thinking person to believe. But it is a fact declared by the Modernists. Men are saying, as I myself have heard them say, "My Christianity is of such a nature that it would not be affected even if it should be proven that Jesus Christ did not die, did not rise from the dead or even that he did not live." What do they mean? They mean that they now have in printed form, no matter how they got them, some teachings as to how to live, some social principles, and this they call "Christianity." But "Christianity" means the "anity" of Christ, if it means anything. You have no right to call anything "Rooseveltian" if it does not agree with the position that Roosevelt took.Now Christ distinctly declared that the teachings about human relations were not the heart of His message but were only the arms and legs (i.e. that by which it touched the everyday life). His central message was: "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." The acceptance of Christ's person and work at His own estimate is certainly the least that can be called Christianity. You might as well make a being that had no brain and call it a man, as to emasculate the teachings of Christ by cutting Him out as the Divine Redeemer and still call it Christianity. The Christianity which is according to Christ—according to the Bible, according to the prophets and the apostles—is the only Christianity there is. All else that takes the name is as false as the Bolshevist who claims to be an American.
Fundamentals Are Worth Fighting For
This is what distinguishes him from the mere Conservative. You will hear many men say, "Well, I believe in the fundamentals; I think that they are important, but I do not join the Fundamentalist movement because I do not like their ways, and I do not see the need of raising a disturbance. I believe in preaching the truth and not wasting time in combating error." But the Fundamentalists fall into line with Jesus and with Jude in fighting error in the church of God as well as in proclaiming the truth and suffering persecution.There are some real pacifists in the world, some people that will not fight over anything; but they are very few. Most people will fight when they realize that something precious is in danger. Every normal person, and certainly every normal Christian, hates a conflict, shrinks from it with a deep and awful dread. But every normal person also knows that active evil is never checked by acquiescent virtue. As has been said, "The wicked may flee when no man pursueth, but he flees faster when a righteous man is after him."Some tell us to "deal only in the positive, to preach our gospel, pay no attention to errors and leave the other fellow alone." That looks well on paper and sounds very pretty, but it will not stand the light of history or of reason or of the Word of God. The best of seed will not dispense with the need of cultivators with which to attack the weeds. Food and drink and following the laws of hygiene are necessary, but when poison has been taken intentionally or unintentionally in your family, you do not just say, "Now here is some nice meat and potato; don't pay any attention to the poison, "but you administer the proper antidote. No doctor will operate on you without making a complete campaign against germs, nor would you want him to. If you were building a house and someone persisted in tearing out the foundations as fast as they were laid, would you smile and go calmly on with your work, letting him do this, even if he were "such a sweet man"?
Old Testament Fundamentalists
I will not take time to bring you all the proof that the Bible contains regarding the right of Fundamentalists to fight indifference of the faith, for then I would have to read you most of it. However, I ask you to point out one prophet that was not sent to denounce sin, error of doctrine and unrighteousness of life. There were prophets among the people who were not Fundamentalists, who preached "Peace, peace, when there was no peace"; but who were they? Why are not their sermons in the Bible instead of those of the fighting Jeremiah? Because God did not send them. Read your Bible even with one eye open, and you will see that the prophecies of the Bible are the sermons of the Fundamentalists who believed in fighting with all their might. But there is many a church today that would not have one of them as pastor. Do you think that Isaiah or Jeremiah would last very long in a church of today? How would Micah and Amos fare? Would they not be dealt with as in the days of old?
New Testament Fundamentalists
But come to the New Testament. Jesus was not a fighter, was He? He just preached the Gospel, just healed, just talked nice to people! He never called people hard names! It was always comfortable to be about Him, wasn't it? Strange how people read their Bibles. They seem to have a blind spot. There are great parts of it that they never see.What was Christ's attitude toward the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two great religious groups of the day? He called Herod "a fox." He called the Pharisees and Sadducees "hypocrites" and "whited sepulchers" and "wolves." He warned His disciples against them. He declared war on them. He did not denounce the sinners nor those who persecuted Him, but He did believe in war upon those in the religious group who sought to destroy the faith and bring a curse instead of a blessing upon men.He taught His apostles so well that they followed the same plan, witnessing to the world, submitting to the persecution, but fighting those who would pervert the faith. Paul called such "dogs." John called them "anti-Christs." John forbade anyone to wish them God-speed or to welcome them into the house. In his second epistle, verse nine, he says, "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God."Many of the Modernists have taken to themselves the title "Progressive." Let them have it. God's Word states that the "Progressives" who do not abide in the teachings of Christ have not God, and certainly no one would contend that "Progressives" in religion today are abiding in the teachings of Christ, except such of His social teachings as appeal to them. They do not abide in His teachings concerning Himself, concerning the Old Testament, concerning the inspiration which the apostles were to have by which they wrote the New Testament, concerning His death and resurrection and coming again and kingdom. They throw aside with scant courtesy even His teachings through His apostles who were called for the very purpose of carrying to the full the things which He could not reveal while on earth.
Battle Books
Many of the books of the New Testament were written especially to correct errors of doctrine and, therefore, must have been written by Fundamentalists, men who believed that the fundamentals must be fought for. Romans was written against the Legalists and the Antinomians. Galatians hurls its invectives against the Judaizers. Ephesians and Colossians were against the Gnostics. In his epistles, John had clearly in mind the false teachers of the day. Most of the epistles strike at some departures from the faith, and they do not treat them as inconsequential, neither do the writers say, "Of course, if the false teachers are living nice lives, then they are not to be spoken against!" In the gospels, Jesus again and again warns against false doctrine, and in His revelation through John, He speaks sharply to the church in Pergamos "because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam ... so hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth" (Rev. 2:14-16). He says to the church in Thyatira, "Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess" (Rev. 2:20). Evidently it makes some difference to the Lord what people teach as well as how they live. The church in Philadelphia was warmly commended because thou "hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name" (Rev. 3:8). Does it make no difference whether churches today keep His Word or not? Does He care whether His divine Name is denied or not? Does He care whether churches bearing His name stand for the fundamentals of His faith or deny them? There can be but one answer to those who believe He has spoken.If, then, you do not wish to keep company with Fundamentalists, you will have to go outside of the Bible; you will have to "abide not in the doctrine of Christ," and then you are assured that "God is not with" you. Is it not better to stay by the truth and upon the foundations? And aren't you glad that the foundations cannot be moved and that they are therefore worth fighting for?They are our precious heritage; let us hold them fast. We have the sure Word of God. Will you not take this as your guide? We have a divine Lord. Will you not take Him as your Lord? We have One who was "the payment of our sins." Will you not accept the payment, the Atonement, and let Him be your Savior? Will you not build upon the "only foundation which can be laid, which is Jesus Christ"? He is the true Fundamentalist who plants his faith on the Rock, the Christ revealed in the Old Testament, in the Gospels and in the Epistles. He shall not be moved! He shall stand with Christ forever!
Fundamental Evangelistic Association
1476 W. Herndon, Suite 104Fresno, California 93711 U.S.A.
Telephone 559-438-0080 : Fax 559-438-0089
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