Posts by Don Johnson
Comments on The Bible at the Center of the Modern University
Don Johnson Editorial note: We are in the midst of a series of posts from the messages delivered at the Pre-Convention Conference of the Northern Baptist Convention, 1920. From the Conference the Fundamental Fellowship was formed which is today known as the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International. The messages from the conference were published in a…
Read MoreThe Church of the Fundamentalists – A Review
Review by Don Johnson Larry R. Oats. The Church of the Fundamentalists: An Examination of Ecclesiastical Separation in the Twentieth Century. Watertown, WI: Maranatha Baptist Press, 2016. 176 pgs. Larry Oats prefaces his new book, The Church of the Fundamentalists, by noting “While much has been written on the histories of the fundamentalist and evangelical…
Read MoreComments on An Unexpected Message
Don Johnson Editorial note: We are in the midst of a series of posts from the messages delivered at the Pre-Convention Conference of the Northern Baptist Convention, 1920. From the Conference the Fundamental Fellowship was formed which is today known as the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International. The messages from the conference were published in a…
Read MoreReview: The Baptist Story
The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement. Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, and Michael A. G. Haykin. Nashville: B & H Academic, 2015. reviewed by Don Johnson The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement ably tells the story of Baptist history from the first stirrings of the Baptist movement to…
Read MoreComments on Northern Baptists and the Deity of Christ
Don Johnson In 1920, concerned Baptists of the Northern Baptist Convention met prior to the Convention in what was called the Pre-Convention Conference. With this meeting the Fundamentalist Fellowship was formed and the opening salvos in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy were fired. We are reproducing here the messages that were preached at that Conference as collected…
Read MoreBe Careful Who You Listen To
Don Johnson In discussing the interpretation of Psalm 44, my friend Mark Ward observes, “Psalm 44 doesn’t just express the nation’s feelings of frustration; it expresses their faith. They still instinctively reached out to Yahweh and not to other gods.” It strikes me that we can see this on display in Jeremiah 27 as well,…
Read MoreComments on Baptist Fundamentals – The Significance of the Ordinances
Don Johnson The installment from Baptist Fundamentals this week is one of the shortest pieces in the book, an exhortation on the ordinances: “The Significance of the Ordinances.” As such it is much more ‘blog-length’ and perhaps easier reading than some of the earlier pieces. The author is a man who I know little about,…
Read MoreComments on – The Divine Unity of Holy Scripture
Don Johnson In “The Divine Unity of Holy Scripture,” Frank M. Goodchild begins with a line that is a touchstone for fundamentalism: “I accept the Bible unmutilated.” On the whole, the message is a rallying cry for the Bible, the source of all we know for certain about God and the world he created. In…
Read MoreComments on Baptist Fundamentals: Fidelity to Our Baptist Heritage
Don Johnson Our latest installment from Baptist Fundamentals came in two parts over the last two days. The message was by Thomas Jefferson Villers, then pastor of First Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan. His message could be characterized as more “devotional” in quality, as opposed to the “argumentative” one might expect at an inaugural fundamentalist conference.…
Read MoreHistoric Baptist Principles? … or the seed of defeat in the soil of revival
Don Johnson We’ve started a series of posts republishing the sermons from the inaugural Pre-Convention Conference of Northern Baptists, recorded for us in the book Baptist Fundamentals. My copy is from the collection provided by Maranatha Baptist University’s Roger Williams Heritage Archives, a Logos format collection of resources available here. Portions of this material are…
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