The Baptist Pillar © Brandon Bible Baptist Church 1992-Present www.baptistpillar.com
"...The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."
I Timothy 3:15
The Bible and the Baptist
Richard B. Cook
Taken from The Story of the Baptists, 1887
The Bible is God’s book. It contains his revealed will to man. Prophets and apostles wrote under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the son of God, “Hear ye him.” Christ is the head over the church and its Law-giver, and the New Testament contains his law, which is our only infallible guide, and the supreme standard by which all churches and doctrines and rites are to be tried.
Those are Christian churches, strictly speaking, that correspond with the New Testament pattern, and the Baptists have ever appealed to the New Testament, as furnishing the only true authority for the faith and practices of the churches.
There are some who regard the church of the first three centuries succeeding the apostolic age, as being the model of what the Christian church ought to be. But they have not the slightest authority. The doctrines and practices of those times are not to be accepted, unless they can be verified by the word of God.
The great Erasmus says;— “It is not from human reservoirs, fetid with stagnant waters, that we should draw the doctrine of salvation, but from the pure and abundant streams that flow from the heart of God.”
So we say it is not from the corrupt pools of early tradition that we receive the doctrines and ordinances of the church, but from the pure fountain of God’s word.
It is their adherence to the Bible alone that distinguishes the Baptists from the Roman Catholics, and in a less degree from Protestants.
The Papal Church claims the right to change the ordinances, and though this right is questioned by, Protestants, generally, yet, practically, they endorse it.