What follows is a sermon clip by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor, Ralph Wingate Jr. Wingate is the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Normal, Illinois. Wingate attended the same IFB college I did, Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan, a decade before me. He attended college with my wife’s uncle, James Dennis, pastor of Newark Baptist Temple, Heath, Ohio.
I heard Ralph Wingate Jr. preach a few times over the years. For a time, he was one of the darlings of the Midwestern Baptist College big-name preacher pool. Prior to accepting the pastorate at Calvary Baptist Church in Normal, Wingate pastored Emmanuel Baptist Church in Newington, Connecticut.
In this sermon clip, Wingate is preaching a sermon on legalism. Wingate gives two illustrations of the danger of legalism, Jack Schaap and Bruce Gerencser. Yes sir, I have spies all over America listening to sermons looking for incidents of me being used as an illustration or a warning. I have known for some time that I am being used as a cautionary tale, a warning to the faithful. One church, several years ago, even held a special prayer meeting for me, hoping that God would get ahold of me and bring me back to the fold. (their prayers failed)
Enjoy!
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Download audio clip (right click and save)
Several things:
Note how the pastor connects me to Jack Schaap. The same rotten fruit produced the same rotten result. The key difference between Schaap and I? I have never had sexual relations with a sixteen year old girl in a church I pastoring. (or any other time) And, if Wingate has been reading my blog for any amount of time at all, he should know that I left the IFB church movement long before I left the ministry. Wingate makes the mistake of judging me and my theology at a particular point in time and does not account for the fact that my theology dramatically changed over the last twelve years in the ministry. (but, hey, why ruin a good sermon illustration with context)
Note how the pastor stumbles over his theology at the end of the clip. The big dilemma for pastors like Wingate is what to do with me. Wingate, the good Baptist he is, believes a person cannot fall from grace. So here is telling his congregation I was a preacher for 25 years, won people to Christ, and, oh wait, I can’t let them know he was a “real” Christian, so, if he was really saved, well, that’s between him and God. I remain a real problem for IFB preachers. They can’t deny my fruit over 25 years in the ministry, so they must find some way to invalidate my conversion and devotion to Jesus.
The easiest way is to say that I was never a Christian. Of course this presents a whole other set of problems, problems like how in the world did I deceive thousands of parishioners, dozens of pastors, and even one of his fellow classmates, James Dennis? How did I deceive Dr. Tom Malone, the president of the Midwestern Baptist College? How did I deceive my father-in-law, a graduate of Midwestern, a IFB pastor himself? How did I deceive numerous preachers, evangelists, and missionaries who preached for me?
Not one person, not ONE person, ever said of Pastor Bruce Gerencser, I have questions about whether or not he is a Christian. Either this is a conspiracy of grand proportions and I am a master deceiver, or the truth is, doctrine be damned, I once was a Christian and now I am not. (and my wife can verify how lousy I am at lying and deception)
Keep in mind,Wingate’s use of the word legalism is subterfuge. I have seen this method used time and time again. Legalism is defined as works added to salvation or a system by which works gain a person salvation. No IFB Baptist church is legalistic by this standard. Oh, they all have rules and standards BUT they ALL believe their rules and standards are derived from the Bible and that Christian people, people saved by the grace of God, should willingly WANT to live by these rules and standards, not to be saved but because they ARE saved. (I am of the opinion almost ALL Christian sects, except the most antinomian of them, preach a works salvation gospel, not unlike the Catholics they despise)
I bear Ralph Wingate Jr. no ill will. I know his theology frontwards and backwards. I know why he must preach what he does. But, here I am, defying all attempts to be “explained.”
I know some of you are dying to know how I got this clip. Can’t tell. When people send me things confidentially, I treat their correspondence with me like a Priest does the confessional. I appreciate being made aware of this sermon and I am so glad to see Christians like Ralph Wingate Jr. care.
If you would like to see the actual sermon video, you can see it on Vimeo. The above audio clip starts at around the 11 minute mark.
Legalism? Huh, that sounds like he’s really stretching… and how is legalism the thing that made Schaap boink a teenaged girl? Will have to watch the entire sermon I guess to figure out what type of twisted illogic logic this pastor is using.
Isn’t it amazing that not one of the fellow pastors, missionaries, etc., etc. had the discernment that Christians are always speaking of? So if none of them had that gift, maybe the Holy Spirit could have revealed it unto them that you were a fake? To me, it shows it’s all a crock. And what makes me mad is that people like me took it very seriously, believed every word and kept trying to figure it all out. Well I finally figured it all out. It’s bs.
Correct. I deceived some preachers that were advertised as men full of the Holy Spirit, men who were considered great men of God. Or…I was what I say I was and now I am not. Which sounds more likely?
Ok, just listened to it and have 2 quick things:
1. How ’bout the cute little slap, “if he ever had the Faith the start with”. (Amazing how they ALWAYS have to run back to that. Always).
2. WhatthefuckingFUCK does Legalism have to do with your lifestory??
sorry Bruce he mentioned you in that kind of context. Can he truly love his atheist neighbour like he mentions of? Jesus would. Can he? Nope. He warns people instead. num nut. unlike Christ.
Thanks, Nancy.
These churches like to somehow show that you can never lose your salvation and yet if you turn away from their version of Christianity they have to try to show you were never saved to begin with. No wonder people end up being neurotic. They can’t tell if the believing person next to them really believes since half of them are gone in a few years time but how can they then know if they are truly saved because, after all, Liz sure seemed like a real Christian. Fruit of the spirit and all that. Maybe Biblegod is going to fry them and they just haven’t figured it out yet.
I find it all to be a sad manipulation of people in the end, even if many pastors are sincere. Keeping the pew sitters afraid doesn’t really hurt the tithing, now does it? Keeps the believers coming back to make sure they are saved, doesn’t it?
I truly think if there is a god then that god has to love every person on this planet or else nobody. The Christians can’t possibly have a corner on the market. I refuse to believe that Hindus, Muslims and assorted others like deists and atheists are all going to hell.
I fully understand Wingate’s reasoning and methodology. In my preaching days I used similar illustrations to warn people about what happens when a person gets off the straight and narrow.
You are right…such illustrations are used to elicit fear and from that fear people will be motivated to obey.
Bruce
Probably less than 10% of the general population know the difference between a hypothesis and a theory and this includes your readership.
bill
But they at least know which post to comment on.
I assume you meant this comment for another post.
What will we do Bill when we really get old.
That said, I agree with you. Even I, very much as science-challenged person, have to look at the definitions to make sure I am suing the words correctly,
Bruce, now you have truly come to embody the sentiment expressed in this poster:
http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html
You’re welcome. (grin)
Rob
Very funny, Rob and I think quite true.
Anything I can do to help the faithful.
lol lol
Bruce,
It would be interesting if he actually told his sheep the URL of your blog in the sermon. Or, is someone asked him afterwards. I’s shure he needs to shelter “his flock” from reading your blod as only ‘he’ can read, discern and interperate it for them.
Jeff, I am sure he would warn them and not give up the URL.. sort of reminds me of a funny story that happened here recently. In our tiny southern town we have a sex shop that sells sex toys, DVDs, pretty nighties, beautiful lingerie and other unmentionables. I was in there Sunday afternoon and in popped two church women, looked like they were maybe Baptist by the way they dressed. I listened as they told the clerk that their pastor raged against in the place in his sermon that Sunday, said it was a pit of sexual filth, debauchery, etc, etc… and never to go there. So there they were because they had to see for themselves. While they were cluck cluck clucking about the awfulness they ended up buying lingerie….Just like those ladies rushing to the sex shop I’m expecting that hordes that heard that sermon will come rushing here to read Bruce’s words.
I still want to know how Bruce’s life story is ‘legalistic’ I guess I ain’t as innerleckjewel like some of your readeres.
Seems to me that Wingate fits perfectly with the modern doctrine of willful ignorance. Rather than actually caring to learn what your position is, what you mean when you call yourself an atheist, or how you progressed from Christianity to atheism, he is more interested in boxing you up neatly into a package that he can reject. This is a classic sign of fear. Beleieve it or not Bruce, you are one terrifying character. Christians everywhere are more frightened of you than almost anything. Because, if it can happen to you, then it can happen to anyone. Enter Wingate’s use of fear to his audience: we must be on guard.
I also find it perfectly predictable that he slips in the phrase “if he had any faith to begin with”. How many times do we have to see this lame excuse? Since the scenario of a Christian leaving their faith is scary and confusing to other Christians, they always run back to the old “he/she wasn’t a Christian to begin with”.
Let me say to Mr. Wingate: “Boo!” There are lots of us out here. We were real Christians just like you. Now we are atheists. Does that scare you? It should not. If you really, truly care about the truth, and if your God is really the truth, then you have nothing to fear by honestly seeking to understand our position and how we came to leave Christianity.
Exactly so. Most people just fade away after the conversion so it’s pretty easy to say “Well, they just were saying the words, they weren’t sincere.”
Bruce is a case where you just can’t fit him into the only available category: “Never was a Christian”.
I remember thinking similar things as a Christian since you would hear “So and so is no longer ‘walking with the Lord’”. I’d end up rationalizing it somehow, but it was not an easy thing to do.
Well said Liz. As Marcus Aurelius said:
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
Biblegod is far too capricious, random in his love,
I really need to get that as a poster for the office wall. One of my favorite quotes. Thanks for using it on Bruce’s blog. Made me smile.
Beautifully wise quote, I had never heard this. Thanks for sharing it.
a joke for ya:
“have heard of the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who lay awake all night, wondering whether there really was a dog.”
you know the best thing about being dyslexic. you get to worship your Dog and take your god for a walk ” Bad god, bad god we do that out side”
roflol
Funny, as always!
Bruce you even fooled me. When I was leaving the church I made you an archtype of what I was fighting to reconsile in myself: spiritual versus sefl ritiousness, freedome versus control. thank you for what you do now. I hope you can keep confounding and pissing off the faithull in power.
Hi Bruce,
I noticed on the video that he doesn’t mention your name but it must be obvious to IBF people that he is refering to you. He says that he’s been looking at your blog for the past couple of months but doesn’t give the real reason that you left the faith.
As an aside he says that you may not have been a Christian, only God knows. He attributes your departure to legalism, but I thought that it was because you became convinced that the bible was not the Word of God and that it was highly unlikely that God existed and, if he does, then he is not the bible God.
Funny how he can look at your blog for the past two months and miss this point. I wonder if he was lying to his congregation or, if not, is he just simply unwilling to admit that any “born again” pastor could come to a different conclusion on the bible and believe that the bible is not the Word of God after a detailed investigation of its origins?
Putting you in the same league as Jack Schaap was a bit underhanded (to state it mildly) wasn’t it? Has this guy left any comments on your blog as a result of all his supposed reading of it?
Shalom,
John Arthur
So he’s saying legalism is making up rules to go by to try to please God, and that both you and Schaap did that, and that’s where ya’ll went wrong? So is he preaching against the IFB world? I need to listen to the whole thing, I guess, to try to understand what exactly he’s warning people not to do so they don’t turn out like his examples.
A public denied becomes a public demanding.
Best way to get people curious about something is to ban it or denounce it from the pulpit. Look what happened in the Garden of Eden with that Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil!!! Also, our IFB Bap Franchises (some call them churches) are full of slogans, cliches, and lofty oratory aimed at making the head Bap in the pulpit seem the expert or knowledgeable one. Can’t have anyone doubting that, now can we?
To dispose of others with flippant figures of speech (“he was never saved in the first place”) reveals a subtle fear in the pulpit; that maybe they’re not the experts after all, and that life on planet earth sometimes just confounds their theology. Self-professed expert Bible thumpers cannot run the risk of being seen as not having all the answers. That’s why they make orations such as the one referenced above about Bruce. Everything out there must conform with Baptist dogma, otherwise they perceive a threat to their little Baptist Franchise (some call it a church). No accommodation is made at all to anything that doesn’t conform to their dogma, even though Jesus said, “Other sheep have I, but not of this fold.” The Baptist Manual is a very exclusionary book. Thank God the Bible is not!
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
Chew on that for a moment, and realize that whether through the holy spirit or, if you choose to believe it was merely David the man, one of the most accomplished kings ever known to the ancient near east, that either you or he was the fool. There is no middle, no postmodern relativistic answer that satisfactorily can make the atheist and the theist one flesh. Have generations been fools for believing in God, and you all of a sudden are one of the enlightened few? No, atheists have always been around, but they now take comfort in their ability to make community on their blogs.
I’ve just happened across yours this morning as I was doing a search in which some of your posts were tagged. I read through a number of them, and would agree with others that you held/were taught a legalistic faith. I have IBF family, and have spent time among them. I’m also a military chaplain, now a conservative Presbyterian, who spent five years in an academically outstanding seminary. I’ve seen good and bad in both worlds, but the one thing I’ve seen again and again is that both legalism and antinomianism will make a shipwreck of one’s faith.
Reconsider your foundations. Take a knee. Just remember that whether you glorify God in his love by holding to the finished work of his Son, or glorify him in his righteous justice by bearing your own rebellious guilt in hell, he will be glorified. I pray the former for you, and that God would take the veil from your eyes, leading you to the repentance that gives life.
And you apparently take comfort in reading and commenting on their blogs.
I think athiests take a rather kind view an the abrahamc beliefs. I dont deny the possible exsistance of your god. I just think he is an evil dick. Yiu use scripture to call bruce a fool, now ill use scripture to point out that your god is evil. Condoning rapedeutironomy 22:23 – 22-29. Conboning slavery exidus 21:2-21:21. Murdering children deurironomt 21:18-21:21. Genocide of those who worsip other gods deutiromomy 7:2-7:16. Now i have been told that jesus is kinder but according toMalachi 3:6 god boes not change. I have to judge a tree by its fruit, ill take a fool like Bruce any day over one who worships a dark god, especialy onewhose followers think our nation should be forced to follow that god. I am using a touch screen to write this ad cannot see what im writing so i appologize for spelling and gramaticle errors
My touch screen iPad turns me into a terrible speller too.
Thanks for commenting!
Here is a puzzle: in Matthew 5:22 Jesus says “… Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
So if one uses the bible to call someone a fool by quoting Psalm 14:1 at them, is that person doing the quoting in danger of ‘the fire of hell’?
You aren’t interpreting that verse right!!
But it’s ok, Obiron. You’re not raca.
My what a twisted view of glorification and love the Christian ends up having, eh? The old righteous judgement in hell. I’m sure you will be enjoying the banquet in heaven whilst you sit at the right hand of Jesus who is very impressed by your 5 years in an academically outstanding seminary and listening to the floor show – the screams of the damned.
The threats of hell always tick me off, really. Love does not equal torture. Just doesn’t work that way.
Correct. In what other setting would we approve of a person torturing those who don’t believe the same things they do? The Christian God is not only an evil deity but he is an evil human too. Even if I believed God existed, I certainly would not embrace the God of the Bible. (especially the God found in the Old Testament) As I have said many times, the God of the Bible is a mean, vitriolic, vindictive, son-of-a-bitch. Why would anyone want to worship such a God?
Hi Providential Messenger,
I don’t think that the bible god exists. How can one believe in someone who commands a people to commit genocide and to put all in the cities of Caanan to death (except Rahab) and then burn these cities to the ground? This is cruel abd barbaric. Woman and little children are all put to the sword and if anyone survived, just to make sure they didn’t, many of these cities were burnt to the ground.
God is the Lord who changes not. Yet Jesus told us to love our enemies. He commnaded us to be compassionate just as our Father in heaven is compassionate. The OT god seems hardly compatible with this. How can he be compassionate?
Why would we want to believe in a god who throws people into the so-called Lake of Fire? How can the god of the NT be compassionate, if he does this?
The person who denies the cruel bible god is not a fool. Give me compassion, mercy and lovingkindness any day.It is the person who believes that the bible god exists that needs to rethink his/her position.
Shalom,
John Arthur
Providential Messenger, let me respond to you rationally. That old quote about a fool saying there is no god really is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Let me explain why.
Do you really think that what defines someone as a “fool” is whether or not they believe in God? There have been many very, very intelligent, accomplished, and even wise people through history who have not believed in God. Einstein, Isaac Asimov, Noam Chomsky, Neils Bohr, Francis Crick, Freud, Marie Curie, and so on. Granted, there have probably been some foolish atheists in history too, and certainly there have been some evil ones (e.g Joseph Stalin). But to say that disbelief in God is what makes you a fool is completely ridiculous and easily disproven. In fact, I think it is fair to say that without some of these wise atheists, we would be a much less advanced civilization than we are. We might even still be living in tents and herding goats.
I challenge you. If you really want to know what the truth is in life, then examine your Bible objectively and rationally. Any true thing will always hold up to an objective and rational examination. Rather than just quoting something that was written several thousand years ago by relatively uneducated people, why don’t you actually think about whether it is true. Do you really think that all atheists are fools and all Christians are wise?
If you are only interested in posting flippant comments on a blog, then all the power to you. But if you really actually care about learning what atheism is about and learning some more truth about this world, then let’s engage in civil, rational, and objective discussion.
Don’t hold your breath CA. It is almost impossible to look down your nose, scold, and threaten Hellfire and damnation during a rational discussion.
DaGriff,
Correct. The internet insulates from one another. I really wonder if people who talk the way they do if they met me face to face. I doubt it.
Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion.
Thank you for tackling this person’s comment. I simply don’t have it in me today to try and respond to such foolishness. I am glad there are people like you hanging out here.
Bruce
Bruce, you’ve proven that their faith cannot be explained, because you have been fully within it, and have come to reject it wholly. I am not surprised at the haughty ProvidentialMessenger and his holier than thou admonishment, but I think it’s a cool thing that YOU are being used as a warning. Jack Schaap does not hold a candle to you, an honorable person who would never do, say, or be any of the rotten things he has done, said, and been.
Legalism did in your faith? Really? He’s not read your blog, not really. Not to come up with that idea.
Keep it up, Bruce! You’re my favorite!
Thanks Cat. I appreciate your kindness AND most of all your friendship.