Church Voices

This article was written over 50 years ago and the truth of it still applies today.

Every major denomination that comes to mind hires almost exclusively from the colleges that were founded to serve their respective denominations. This has a lot of obvious advantages. After all, a minister is far more effective if he has actually been trained in theology, homeletics, history, and other academic subjects. Any church that has the option between a minister who has gone through seminary or a minister with no seminary training is going to select the one with training. Not only that but it is advantageous to the church at large to have educated men representing her to the world.

However, there is a danger in this. It makes it quite easy for apostasy to become orthodoxy. The Restoration Movement has approximately 6 million members. It doesn’t take convincing all 6 million members that a heresy is correct, it only takes convincing a few dozen people at a couple of colleges, and these people will then begin churning out ministers who will spread the heresy to the faithful. This happened once before to the Restoration Movement (and to other denominations) in the early 1900s. But why read my words when you can read Dr. Foster’s?

It was keen strategy for the radicals to strike first at the colleges to capture the source of supply for the pulpits. Churches which have no means of training future leadership, are doomed. The downfall of the colleges is a pathetic record. Swift and terrifying was the change that swept the colleges into the hands of infidels. It was all accomplished practically within the first two decades of this century. Trusting brethren were easy victims of the practiced deceit of the modernists. The old ruse of the Trojan horse was worked again with ridiculous ease: shining doctors of philosophy suddenly appeared without the college walls and were promptly hauled in by unsuspecting brethren who did not realize the German rationalism on the inside or the fearful carnage that would ensue with the fall of darkness.

The end result of all this was the foundation of Cincinnati Bible College in 1929. The apostasy in Restoration colleges had become so untenable that it necesitated the foundation of a new college in order to produce faithful ministers. And through the grace of God for the last 70 years it has done so. But that history doesn’t mean it will continue to do so.

There are no external checks on the teaching or the type of teachers in our colleges and seminaries. The hiring is done from within, as is the curriculum (with of course the appropriate guidance from accrediting bodies). What’s to prevent our colleges from being turned into apostate bodies yet again? Obviously the faithfulness of the past is no guarantee of continued faithfulness in the future (I think that’s a major point in the Old Testament). Is it even possible to put checks into place on our colleges?

Of course what this comes down to is a trust in God. It may be that someday the Restoration Movement abandons the gospel entirely. That will hardly be the end of the gospel. One day it may be the son of Stephen Chikwati (a missionary my church supports) will himself be a missionary to the godless heathens in America.

Of course, if this ever is the end result never let it be said that the faithful didn’t go down swinging.