Christian Cooperation and Separation - John R Rice

Christian Cooperation and Separation
say, “Brother Rice, Jesus is the norm. If you have Jesus, He is
enough.”
Since the Billy Graham campaign in Wheaton, Illinois,
several modernists have met with the Pastors’ Conference. The
other day they were going to prepare a Statement of Faith, an
evangelical Statement of Faith, but one preacher said, “Let’s
just have this one and say we believe in our Divine Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ.”
That is a direct quotation of the statement on which the
National Council of Churches, originally the Federal Council of
Churches, was organized.
But the trouble with that is, we are commanded not to have
just Christ the center alone, but He must be the Christ of the
Bible. The standard is not only Christ but the doctrine of
Christ, the teaching about Christ. What teaching? In the Bible.
Where are you going to find it? In the Encyclopaedia
Britannica? No. In the Bible. Where will you find it? In some
book by E. Stanley Jones? No. In the Bible. God is requiring
the doctrine of Christ in the Bible as the only basis for
Christian fellowship.
You may say, “Oh, but I love Jesus.” It matters not who you
love. If you don’t accept Him as the Bible presents Him, then
you have another Jesus and you are not saved. It is the
doctrine of Christ, which is here a condition of salvation.
In I Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4, Paul said,
This is the Gospel which I preached unto you and by
which you are saved, unless the whole thing is false, unless
you believed in vain. How that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that
22