Biblical Separation Defended - Far Eastern Bible College

publicly rebuked and warned against. His open and increasing hostilityto them cannot possibly be used to prove anything except that Christiansare to likewise openly rebuke and warn against false prophets. Christ’scooperation, fellowship, and approval was confined to only those whoprofessed to be His; and His dealing with sinners was alwayscharacterized by His proclaiming the truth, correcting the errors, and bythe Savior’s complete freedom from ever giving an outward appearanceof approval of, fellowship with, or cooperation with false teachers,unbelievers, or evildoers. This is far different from the posture ofcooperative evangelism which not only fails to rebuke the false teachers,but which cooperates with them and honors them as “Brethren.”Concerning Dr. Ferm’s appeal to the methodology of the evangelistsit may be noted that the ministries of the great evangelists, or theirteachings, are not really the place to determine what the Bible teachesabout a particular subject. God blessed the labors of these men becauseof their untiring energy in proclaiming the true Gospel to multitudes ofmen, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, the unseen prayers ofcountless Christians, and of the faithful planting done by others inthousands upon thousands of cases where the evangelists reaped. Theirgood results do not make them infallible teachers. This can especially beseen to be true when one considers that unlike the Bible, they disagreedamong themselves. Who would question the fact that John Wesleywould vigorously stand against Finney’s denial of the sinful nature ofman? 2 Let the Lord be praised for the use He made of these great men,but for infallible teaching the Scriptures alone are to be sought out. Itmust also be noted that homilies which the evangelists primarily dealwith, are not identical with commentaries: the one having a hortatorythrust, the other an exegetical one. In addition to all of this, theconclusion that the evangelists of the past present a unified case in favorof cooperative evangelism is open to no little question.The Ten ArgumentsDr. Ferm’s sundry assertions concerning Christ’s ministry and itsjustification of the neo-evangelical inclusivist stance were divided bythis writer into ten basic arguments or claims. Each one stated an allegedcharacteristic of Christ’s ministry which Dr. Ferm advanced in his book,92