2002 – Responding To The Compromise in the GARBC

WHEREAS, the Independent Baptist Fellowship of North America (IBFNA) exists to lead the cause for Biblical Separation, and this leadership requires both teaching the truth and warning against compromise (Colossians 1:28), and

WHEREAS, continuing compromise is evident in many of the churches affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC) and its partnering schools and agencies, and

WHEREAS, symptomatic of this compromise is the appointment of Dr. William Brown, currently the President of new evangelical Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, as the next President of Cedarville University, and

WHEREAS, this appointment continues the theological decline Cedarville University has pursued for many years under the leadership of its retiring President, Dr. Paul Dixon, as demonstrated by the speakers in its chapel pulpit, the lack of separatist teaching in its classrooms, the rapid descent into worldliness in its most recent jazz festival, and the discarding of its former musical and theological standards, and

WHEREAS, the GARBC is cooperating with the theological compromise of Cedarville University, the site of the 2002 GARBC Annual Conference, through its partnering relationship, and

WHEREAS, partnering has proved no better than the approval system but has only served to deflect criticism of the GARBC, and

WHEREAS, we recognize that there are several of our fundamentalist brethren who remain in the GARBC,

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that we, the members of the IBFNA meeting in Annual Conference in Middleburg Heights, Ohio, June 25-27, 2002, do affirm that affiliation with the GARBC is inconsistent with the Biblical Doctrine of Separation that has been the very purpose of the IBFNA from its inception.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we encourage all of our fundamentalist brethren to withdraw from the GARBC and that they rally together with the IBFNA in raising high the standard carried by the separatist founders of the GARBC.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that we instruct the Editor of the IBFNA Review to provide Pastors and church members with current information about the compromise in the GARBC so that the IBFNA continues to follow the example of Dr. Robert T. Ketcham, Dr. Paul R. Jackson, and other past leaders of the GARBC, who challenged the compromises of their day and defended Biblical Separation in official GARBC publications.