Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

Off the Cuff (Part 2)
Dr. Robert L. Sumner

IMMIGRATION LAWS ON

THE BOOKS!

Our columnist Sumner Wemp sent me a copy of laws about immigration already on the books:

There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections; all government business will be conducted in our language.

Foreigners will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.

Foreigners will NEVER be able to hold political office.

Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs.

Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.

If foreigners do come and want to buy land that will be okay, BUT options will be restricted. You are not allowed waterfront property. That is reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.

Foreigners may not protest; no demonstrations, no waving a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies, if you do you will be sent home.

If you do come to this country illegally, you will be hunted down and sent straight to jail.

Oh, I forgot to mention, these are laws about immigration already on the books in Mexico!

THIS IS AMERICA?

Walter Kehowski, a tenured mathematics professor in the Maricopa County Community College District (a conglomerate of 10 schools in the Phoenix, Arizona area), sent out a friendly e-mail to his colleagues last Fall on the day before Thanksgiving containing George Washington's "Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789." That was certainly a nice gesture, wasn't it?

Not exactly!

Five of his associates filed "harassment charges" against the gentleman, saying his action was "hostile" and "derogatory." Come again? A thanksgiving message written by the Father of our Country 'hostile' and 'derogatory’?

So the committee found the accusation silly and without merit, of course.

Again, not exactly. Chancellor Rufus Glasper put the professor on "administrative leave" and recommended to the governing board that he be fired.

Wow! That would be on the same level with raping a co-ed in his class, wouldn’t it?

Walt didn't exactly take his punishment lying down. He appealed the decision and contacted F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). F.I.R.E. President Greg Lukianoff, correctly observed, "It boggles the mind that a professor could find himself facing termination simply for e-mailing the Thanksgiving address of our first President.” Thanks to F.I.R.E.'s intervention, the college officials reached a "secret" agreement with Kehowski, saying he could keep his job and he is back in the classroom this Fall.

That this “harassment” of a tenured professor could have happened like this in America is scary and shows how far liberal humanism has entrenched itself in our public educational system.

LEARNING ENGLISH

Put us first in line to admit that English is not an easy language to learn, but folks wanting to live in this country should learn it or go back to whence they came. We are confident that anyone who really wants to live here can master it. One thing is for sure: English, with an alphabet of only 26 characters, is dead easy compared to a ‘picture’ language like Chinese or Japanese, consisting of thousands of brush stroke characters and reading from right to left.

Be that as it may, we found this explanation the other day of why English is hard to learn:

“The bandage was wound around the wound. The farm was used to produce produce. The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse. We must polish the Polish furniture. He could lead if he would get the lead out.”

Okay, legal immigrants, the effort is still worth the result!

WHEN CHARLIE FULLER

CAME TO CHRIST

One of the editor’s youthful heroes was Evangelist Charles E. Fuller, the speaker on the national radio ministry, “The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour.” In my first pastorate, a little church in northern Illinois, I used to hear him (and wept through much of it, especially the invitation when so many were coming to Christ, especially the military). Probably many of our old-time subscribers did the same and we thought you’d be interested in his conversion testimony. Here it is:

Though brought up in a Christian home, my main desire on graduation from college was to get married and get rich. During the next seven years I did get married and became very successful in business – becoming the manager of an orange packing house in southern California.

But then one day I read that Paul Rader would be speaking in Los Angeles the next Sunday, and knowing that he used to be an athlete like myself, I decided to go to hear him. He preached on Ephesians 1:18, a message on Heaven – dealing with “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” – and as he spoke on what Heaven would be like, and what one would have to be like in order to be admitted to Heaven, I realized that I was not fit for Heaven.

I did not raise my hand when the invitation was given; instead I left the church and got into my old Franklin car and drove to a park in Hollywood. There I parked the car under some eucalyptus trees and cried to God saying, “O God, if there is a God, save me now.” And God saved me then.

He also enabled me to see that there was a plan for my life. Ephesians 2:10 meant a great deal to me. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” I had confidence, as a result of this verse, that God had my future all mapped out. Two years later I left the packing house and began to train for the gospel ministry.

God is in the same business today as when Charlie Fuller came to Him. Let Him have you and your life.

ROMAN CATHOLICS & THE

SECOND COMING

Roman Catholic publishers have released two more repudiations of Fundamentalism in the last few years. One is The Rapture Trap by Paul Thigpen (Ascension Press), subtitled A Catholic Response to “End Times” Fever. The other is Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”? by Carl E. Olson (Ignatius Press). Our Pacific Northwest friend Lionel Woodworth called my attention to them recently.

In the Catholic version of “left behind” by Olson, grand commendation is given Jack Van Impe because of his “high praise for Catholicism in general and Pope John Paul II in particular.” (A footnote calls attention to Jack’s admission that Catholics make up his “second largest group of supporters,” but that wouldn’t be the reason he praises them, would it?) We have noted in the past that our ‘walking Bible’ friend has become Romanist in all but name, saying we wouldn’t be surprised if he converted to the apostate church. Apparently the boys in the Vatican feel the same. The same volume that lauds Jack lampoons the late John Walvoord of Dallas Seminary, a man we greatly admired.

What about the Book of Revelation? Here is what God says: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand” (1:3). Here is what Catholicism, in Olson’s book, says: “Over the last couple of centuries many Christians, including most Catholics, have avoided the final book of the Bible, confounded by its imagery and uncertain as to whether or not it offered any meaning useful for their lives.”

Without any useful meaning for their lives? Aren’t Roman Catholics aware of what God said in II Timothy 3:16, 17: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (emphasis added)?

If Romanists don’t find “useful meaning” in Revelation, it is obviously not God’s fault.

YOUR TAX $$$ AT WORK

Isn't it great that we have the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, battling the health issues for all Americans? Just try to visualize all those dedicated doctors doing research, finding cures, giving hope to millions in the fight for fitness!

Well, maybe not!

The 'dedicated' director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, went with hat in hand to the powers that be in the U.S. Senate saying that the $10 billion already pocketed of our tax dollars wasn't enough and she needed "another billion" bucks! Hey, our health depends on it, right?

Not exactly.

One of the faithful Senate watchdogs, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) thought he'd check on how Sister Gerberding spent the last $10 billion. We don't know whether you are ready for this or not, but here are some of the things he found and reported in his 115-page critique (thanks to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Donald E. Wildmon of the American Family Association). Your hard-earned tax dollars financed millions on lavish facilities, questionable conferences, and new offices in the home states of committee members “who oversee its funding." Some of "disease control" financing included:

1. A "transgender" beauty pageant.

2. A "safe sex" event featuring a porn star.

3. Conferences – boy, did they ever have conferences – for which it paid $45 million and featured prostitutes and beach parties.

4. Of course, CDC had HIV/AIDS events, one of which was a "bar night" with attendees being taught "how to throw a good party with lots of alcohol."

5. Staff members were forced (!) to attended lots of 'around the world' AIDS conferences, in two cases sending 110 to conferences that would have paid for "drugs that would have prevented mother-to-child AIDS transmission in over 115,000 babies." Hey, they know their priorities, don't they?

6. Spent $1.7 million of designated anti-terrorism fund trying to get health messages into TV shows and movies.

7. In spite of spending $5 billion over the last seven years on HIV/AIDS prevention, our country "still sees 40,000 new cases each year, with no decrease in infection rates for over a decade." Something is wrong, wrong, wrong with this program!

8. Spent over a third of a billion of your bucks to pay for ads to fight childhood obesity – a noble cause that produced zip and zap in results (who knows).

But why go on?

UP-DATE ON RELIGIOUS

LIBERTY: CHURCH &

STATE!

In our January-February issue of 2006 we had this item in our “This & That” section:

For the liberals, doesn't their battle cry of "separation of church and state" work both ways? Apparently not. A Texas Appeals Court recently ruled in favor of Peggy Penley against the Crossland Community Bible Church and its pastor, Buddy Westbrook, for giving her the boot due to her immorality (leaving her husband and shacking up with a man not her husband). As far as we can see, the pastor and church did everything according to Scripture, including the steps in Matthew 18:15-20. After all, churches are not governed by secular courts and secular law, but according to the Word of God and their church constitutions.

The church, rightly, appealed and the Texas Supreme Court ruled just recently on the case, declaring unanimously in favor of Pastor Westbrook and the church. Hiram Sasser and the Liberty Legal Institute assisted the church in the case and Sasser noted about the court’s decision, "This is a very strong opinion saying that pastors who are engaging in Matthew 18 church disciplinary process are protected by the Constitution from lawsuits from people who don't like how that goes down."

He added a reminder that the U.S. Constitution protects the right of a church to control its own affairs, both relating to membership and self-government in doctrine and faith, without government interference. Our courts need to keep their sticky, anti-godly fingers out of the affairs of our churches!

So, brethren, govern your churches fairly and righteously in the light of the Word of God, making certain that your constitution outlines clearly such issues as church discipline – and making sure your people understand what it says – and that then you act accordingly. (It won’t help to state it if you don’t follow it!)

BIRTHING BABIES IN DALLAS

Parkland Memorial Hospital is where President John F. Kennedy was taken and declared dead from an assassin's bullet on November 22, 1963. But Parkland’s business today is more about life than death. It has the second busiest maternity ward in the United States and nearly 16,000 bouncing, yelling babies arrive there annually. Even if you toss in an extra day for Leap Year, that is more than 43.7 babies per day!

But, wait, there is much more to this story of interest: some 70% of the little fellers (and gals) were born to ILLEGAL immigrants during the first 6 months of last year!

And Parkland, which also operates nine prenatal clinics, is laughing all the way to the bank!

Why? To give you a recent year, in 2004 it delivered 15,938 kicking, screaming infants at a cost of $70.7 million, but still wound up with a surplus of $8 million on babies.

How? Federal taxpayers (via Medicaid) provided $34.5 million, Dallas County taxpayers added $31.3, and other federal agencies (more taxpayer blood) provided another $9.5 million.

But Parkland isn't the only one laughing! The illegals are busting their guts, too. Giving birth in Mexico would have cost them $200. And they wouldn't have received all the other freebees: complimentary prenatal care that includes medication, nutrition, birthing and child care classes, plus free car seats, bottles, diaper and formula after the kid arrived.

Does anyone wonder why millions (some 12 million the feds admit to) of illegals are streaming into this country to be cared for by hard-working American taxpayers? And every one of those illegal babies became an American citizen the moment he/she came out of the womb, thanks to a super-dumb American law somebody sneaked through while America's finest legislators were sleeping at their desks.

The wife of one of our faithful vets put it like this: "My husband is a pilot for the United States Navy (yes, he fought in Iraq) and while the health care is good, we Navy wives don't get any of these perks! Car seats? Diapers? Not so much. So my question is this: Does our public medical care system treat illegal immigrants better than American citizens? Yes it does!"

And don’t forget that they are violating the law just by being here!

Do the illegals have a complaint? Yes, they are disturbed that all the hospital staff doesn't speak Spanish! (You say, "You've got to be kidding," but, alas, I'm not.) But not to worry, folks. Parkland is trying to develop an all-Spanish speaking staff by giving them extra pay!

Enough already. I'd better quit while I'm ahead.

READ IT AND WEEP

Don't say you weren't warned: Newt Gingrich, who came up with that Contract With America years ago, declares:

"Liberals are at it again. Just … months into their majority, Democrats are once again proposing the biggest tax increase in history ...

If it is passed, [the Democrats' 2008 proposed] budget will impose the largest tax increase in history on American taxpayers – totaling nearly $400 billion over five years. Families with children, low-income families, and small businesses all would be hit with hundreds if not thousands of dollars in increased taxes. Just what taxes will be raised?

Here are some of the specifics of the liberal proposal: The 10% Tax Bracket Will Become 15%: More than five million families and individuals who previously owed no taxes will become subject to taxation. Marriage Penalty Relief Will Be Eliminated: 23 million Americans will owe an average of $466 in additional taxes in 2011. The Child Tax Credit Will Be Cut in Half: 31 million Americans will pay an average of $859 more in taxes in 2011...

You're a family of four earning $60,000 a year: Your income-tax bill will rise 61% in 2011, from $3,030 to $4,893... You're an elderly couple earning $40,000 a year: Your taxes will go up by 156% in 2011, from $583 to $1,489... You're a woman: You could be one of the 83 million American women who could see their taxes rise by an average of $2,068... You're married: You could be one of the 48 million married couples who will pay an average of $2,899 more under the liberal tax increase... You have kids: 42 million families with children will pay an average of $2,181 more in taxes."

Again, don’t say you weren’t warned!

SHOULD WE CALL NAMES?

It’s probably dumb to bring this up because I don’t know who wrote the article or really what point the writer was making, but some time ago I clipped a heading out of a magazine, “Why I Don’t Call Names!” While that sounds very pious, it is not very biblical. Samples of name calling in the Bible are found in Galatians 2:4-14; I Timothy 1:20; II Timothy 2:17, 18; 4:10; 4:14, 15; and III John 8. Both false teachers and erring Christians were biblically reported/rebuked by name in the Word of God.

Some of the names we have called in the past include Bishop James Albert Pike, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, and Dr. George Arthur Buttrick. Should immature Christians be warned about these men and their ministries? You be the judge.

Pike, the first one listed, was an Episcopalian bishop and a leader in that denomination, having an influential diocese on the West Coast where he was Bishop of California (1958-66). He was, in fact, a moral rascal and a wildly liberal theologian (if theologian he could be called). He was married three times and his third wife, Diane Kennedy Pike, who was his secretary when their affair started, said she was his mistress long before they were married and almost a year before he divorced his second wife.

Cooperating with the authors of The Death and Life of Bishop Pike, Diane said he had so many affairs going he had a private phone line installed so they could call him. One of the women, Maren Bergrud, committed suicide after a three-year relationship with him, during which time he paid many of her bills out of his bishop’s discretionary funds. His son, James A. Pike, Jr., was a homosexual who committed suicide at age 20. (The bishop was involved with a homosexual himself while a student at Yale.)

As for his liberal, anti-biblical views, he rejected many of the cardinal doctrines of the faith, making fun of the Virgin Birth of Christ, rejected the Trinity, opposed the infallibility of Scripture, referred to much Bible teaching as “theological baggage” and pretty much seemed to follow the line of his youth – when he professed to be an agnostic. As for the Apostles Creed, he said he could not say it, but he could sing it – the idea being that it is all right to sing things you don’t believe if the music is acceptable. After he resigned his bishopric he got into false and wicked so-called spiritualism, using Arthur Ford as his spirit medium to try to contact his dead son. Pike ended up wandering lost in the Judean desert, drinking his own waste, where searchers eventually found his body.

Since Billy Graham had him on his platform during his San Francisco crusade, an act that included Pike leading the crowd in prayer, the average person probably would not be aware of the damage his books could do. After all, the common Christian has great respect for Billy and any friend of his, worthy of such honor as leading in prayer in a crusade service involving tens of thousands, surely should be all right. They need to be warned.

The second man on the list, Oxnam, was the prominent Methodist minister who served as president of the Methodist House of Bishops, president of the old Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Christian Churches) and as president of the World Council of Churches, obviously a very prominent clergyman with outstanding “ministerial” credentials, thus giving him a “high” opinion in the mind of the normal Christian – who would have no idea how bad he was. Dr. G. Archie Weniger called him “the most honored man in Methodism” during the 20^th century.

Yet Oxnam called “justifiable repugnance” the idea of an avenging God being “a dirty bully.” And he thought the very idea of  Hell should be “denounced by preachers in a revolutionary age.” On a boat returning from the first World Council of Churches meeting, a friend of mine, Dr. Ralph G. Colas, during an interview with Oxnam in his stateroom, asked him if calling the God of the Old Testament a “dirty bully” was in harmony with his personal position. Oxnam replied, “That is how I feel about it, exactly.” Oxnam did not believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ nor did he accept the inspiration of the Bible. And in one of our early books we listed about a dozen organizations our government officially listed as un-American in which he was associated.

Donald Grey Barnhouse – who was very sympathetic to Oxnam as a man, finding him warm and friendly – after reading Oxnam’s book, A Testament of Faith published by Little, Brown, & Co, Boston, he concluded, “Dr. Oxnam’s God is not enough, Dr. Oxnam’s Christ is not enough, and the reason for this is that Dr. Oxnam’s Bible is not enough.”

The third minister listed above, Edgar Johnson Goodspeed, wrote over 60 books, many of them highly theological in nature. Do you remember the man with a legion of demons whom Christ cured, then permitted those demons to entire the swine in a nearby field, who then rushed into the sea and drowned? Goodspeed said the man was emotional unstable and in his delusional state only thought he was demon possessed. He said the screams of the man frightened the hogs and they rushed down the hill and into the sea. (Actually, Jesus said the man had quit his ravings, now being in his right mind, when the swine committed hogicide!)

The miracle of the five loaves and two fishes feeding 5,000 men? According to Goodspeed it was a very simple thing: when the lad gave Jesus his lunch it “must have moved those Galileans as it moves us still. They could not do less than he had done. They followed his example.” In short, the whole crowd, moved by the example of the lad and of Jesus, simply shared lunches with each other!

As for the Bible, he called Genesis “an oriental story teller at his best,” Ruth fiction and not history, and called the Ten Commandments “of Canaanite origin.” He denied the physical resurrection of our Lord, saying, “That he is to be with them always, to the very end, shows that it is not as a physical presence that he has come back to them, but as a spiritual one.” He once wrote me a hot letter calling me a murderer because I defended the long ending of Mark.

Shouldn’t young Christians be warned against such an infidel in sheep’s clothing? What if they purchased his books? What if they bought his translation of the Bible, The New Testament: An American Translation, since it was billed as an easy-to-understand version in modern vernacular?

The fourth mentioned, George Arthur Buttrick, was pastor of the once prestigious Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He said anyone who claimed to “believe every word of the Bible” was risking a trip to the insane asylum. His own view of the Bible was, “We should frankly admit the bankruptcy of ‘literal infallibility,’ and, under guidance of the facts, set out on the long hard quest for truth.” And he called the idea of verbal inspiration “mild blasphemy.”

Like Goodspeed, Buttrick denied the physical resurrection of Christ, explaining it away as, “Their memory of him quickened to a presence!” In fact, he said about Christ’s resurrection, “… we do not know. Why pretend we do?” and then adding he did “not wish to know.” Yet as the Apostle Paul noted in that great I Corinthians 15 passage, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the reality of Christ’s physical, literal victory over death, Hell and the grave!

Shouldn’t a warning be sounded about this denier of the faith-once-for-all delivered (Jude 3)? This is especially true since Buttrick was the chief editor of the set of books hailed as one of the greatest literary achievements of the 20^th century, the 12-volume The Interpreter’s Bible. The Christian duped into buying that set would find, as we pointed out in our 47-page A Review and Exposé of The Interpreter’s Bible, denials of biblical accuracy, biblical authority, and biblical authorship; be told there is a large mythical, legendary, imaginative element in the Bible; be offered the opinion of a false progressive revelation; have the miraculous in the Word of God explained away in the fashion we noted Goodspeed doing; and, in fact, find the historic Christian faith under attack from the first page of volume one to the final page of volume twelve.

We repeat: not calling names may sound very pious, but it is also very foolish and very harmful.