Biblical Seperation

I'm a crowd from Winnipeg, Canada, bringing you a message on liberal consiperation, which I trust you will enjoy. We're going to read from 2 Corinthians 6, and rather than read the whole chapter, I'm going to begin at verse 4. In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, and I don't think he's talking here about ministers in the public sense of people in full-time Christian work. In a sense, we all are.

In all things approving ourselves as ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in strikes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, by choice, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by willing spirit, by love, unseeing, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness and the right hand among the lab, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report, as deceivers in their truth, as unknown yet well-known, as dying with the old we live, as chastened and not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things, O new Corinthians. Our mouth is open unto you, our hearts enlarged. You are not straightened in us, but you are straightened in your own inward compassion.

Now, for a recompense in the same, I speak as unto my children, be lost and marred. Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship is righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion has might with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial, that is, with the devil? For what part is he that believes with an infidel? And what agreement has a temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of living 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 off from one and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, that I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dear and beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Paul means many roots here from verse 14 on.

What fellowship, what communion, what concord, what part, what agreement. What is he talking about? I think most Christians would agree that for a Christian to marry a non-Christian would be wrong. Would not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

When I was a pastor, I had to deal with it, and I sometimes recall one occasion, two brothers, both Christians of mine, two sisters, non-Christians, and I tried to reason them through the word of God, and they finally told me, in fairly polite terms, to get us out of our business. When they told me this too, they said, you know, with perfect power of faith and the power of the Holy Ghost, that if you would marry them, you would become Christians. Well, that's not what happened.

You know what happened? They put it down in church. They used to do it every Sunday. One Sunday a week.

One Sunday a week. Once a month. Once every two months.

This kind of thing. I remember one case this evening. He was really a marvelous, marvelous person.

You wouldn't find a better Christian man in anywhere in the world. But he was not a Christian when she was a Christian when we married. We've been married 25 years.

Here's what she said. Well, my husband is finally insane. He's such a wonderful person.

She said if I had to do it again, I would never marry him. We have years of bickering about the children, about moving church, and all this kind of stuff, and we're not to be, albeit in a group, together with people that are not Christians. That's true also in business.

You can hire people that are not Christians. You can work for a non-Christian, but you should not be in a business partnership with a person who is not a money leaver. And I have some close relations who I think they knew that a couple of years ago.

They were in business, and they told us they met some Jewish people in Moscow. They're very wonderful business people, and they're going into a partnership with them. And I tried to talk to one of them.

I said, it isn't going to work. All of this is your mind. You have no idea how wonderful these men are.

I said, yeah, but the Bible says you're not to do it. So they did it anyway. And what happened? One of them lost their shirt.

So total failure. And I can see it coming. You can't, you know, sometimes people do things they shouldn't do just in the interest of furthering something.

That means we're all the same. It's never right to do wrong in order to do right. Think it through.

And what we have today in the evangelical world is something pretty new, up until about 1960 when we were having it. It's called inclusive evangelism. And this is when, having evangelistic crusades, you invite all the churches to come in.

Catholic churches, Lutheran churches, United Churches, you let them come and go. They're not going to be all the way from the truth. You invite them to participate.

And this has become very popular. It's become so popular in England that today, among evangelicals, not that all evangelicals are doing this, but a large number of them are. That's what I'm told.

And it has now come to the point where they say this. If the other person has been baptized in the name of Christ, he's a Christian, you have no right to question his Christianity. That's what's happening in England.

Now, there's always been a group of people that oppose this, and I oppose it myself. And I should say this. As a very young Christian, Tom Rees in Venice, England, came to England and all the churches were invited to participate, which most of them did.

And they had trouble afterwards in paying the bills that incurred renting a 5,000-seat auditorium salon, and bringing Tom Rees home from England. And they had about 100 people profess to be saved. A couple of years later, Stephen Hawking had come, and the Stephen Hawking crusade was all believers, all evangelicals in the crusade.

With far fewer churches cooperating, there were no longer too many finances, there were bigger crowds, and there were 500 people committed. We should have learned from that. Inclusive evangelism, demoralizing, is a good model to get a bigger crowd.

But is it a good model? It's a pragmatic thing. I mean, if you get bigger crowds, shouldn't you do anything to get a bigger crowd? Well, not if you're being confident in the will of God. Don't think that's right.

We have in Saskatoon, two years before the revival, we had a city-wide crusade, and all the churches were invited to cooperate. I did not cooperate. I was the only church in the city that didn't, apparently.

And then the rumors began to fly. A girl from my church was marrying a guy from another church, and she said, Lord, they hate you in their church. I said, They hate me? What about you? She said, I have no idea.

I sent a letter to all the evangelical pastors explaining my position, inviting them in comments. I was not going to cooperate. I got one phone call, one phone call in the city, and one phone call in the letter.

And then the rumors started flying. There were ten Baptist churches in Saskatoon, and I had a Baptist church, and mine was the largest of the ten. So people were asking, why isn't McClellan in this? That's nice and deliberate.

One of the pastors, one of the Baptist pastors, who had gone by name, you know what he told his people? Don McClellan, that means he's not, that's why he's not cooperating. And this really flared through the city, you know. And how does he know about it, anyway? I didn't try to fight this.

I just left it the way it was. That's God's business, you know. Job once said, I will seek unto God, and to God will I commit my cause.

God can take care of what better than you and I can. I left it with God. When Ralph and Lucifer came to Saskatoon, I told them, I said, well, listen, my name is a mother in the city here, and I told them about the circumstance.

And I said, do you guys want to go to another church? Don McClellan said, that's perfectly okay by me. And they said, no, let me take the same stand you take. People don't think that a hidden cause of evangelism is the right thing.

We don't practice that. We work all day doing jobs. People don't know God, but that's what I do.

Which means for one, Daniel and the Crusade would have this great sack of decision-makers. And I called a meeting in the past, and said, what do you want to do with these? And they said, yeah, we'll trust them. We'll do whatever we want to do.

We'll do what we think should be done, and it'll be right. So thank God for that. But I know this, when I was having a revival two years ago, it was a kind of a scary thing.

I think of standing in the middle of a revival. I mean, it's good. It's kind of practice.

This is a sign of God and the beauty of God who saves the world. We even have some preachers who didn't believe in Christ and they're there, on the platform, reading the Bible. You think that's right? I think it's wrong.

That is right. 2 Corinthians chapter 6.