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SEPARATION
In order to guard the purity of the truths mentioned in our doctrinal statement, we recognize that the Scriptures command personal separation unto God from world attitudes, motives, goals, friendships, speech, amusements, styles and dress, etc. It also commands ecclesiastical separation from false religious teachers and from persistently disobedient brethren. Ecclesiastical separation includes a rejection of liberalism, Neo-orthodoxy, New Evangelicalism, and the charismatic movement. Obedience to these commands brings the joy of full and unhindered fellowship with our Father. Romans 12: 1-2, 16:17; II Corinthians 6:14-7:1; II Thessalonians 3:6, 14-15; Titus 3:10; II John 7-11

Too many churches and missions have changed and are now neo-evangelical or non denominationa.  We reject all such doctrine and lack of standards, even if it is former friends or family.

Independent Baptist Christians in Africa

The section below that discussed "Moral Law" shows how the will of God would never lead opposite of his own character or against his own word.  The Bible says by their fruits ye shall know them and the fruit of the work in Mombasa is not what it seems.

Reason for creating this site and for writing the warning about the book "Great and Mighty Things."

I believe that one of the problems with a person becoming a missionary under the wrong foudation is what causes the children of missionaries to have issues because the missionaries are so strong in following the "Will of God" that they misunderstant what the real foundation of our obligation is for serving God.  Let me quote from a book that I am writing:

The sovereign will of God as the ground of obligation.

Those that hold to this theory claim that the will of God is sovereign and that because God’s will is sovereign it creates the ground of obligation, not just reveals or enforces it. 

Now remember, that the moral law consists in voluntary action which is chosen for it’s ultimate end, the good of being and the intrinsic nature and value of the good of being causes moral beings to choose this end for its own sake. We choose knowing God because to do so is to know love and to have life eternal, the best end for all. We also know that even if God did not require that we make such a choice or even if God said that we should not make such a choice, we would be duty bound to make that choice as the only possible moral choice that a moral being can make since it promotes the highest good of all. 

So when one speaks of the will of God as the foundation of obligation they must ask the question, Obligation to do what?  What is it that God is willing his moral beings to do?  He wills that we love God and our neighbor, of course. He wants us to know Him and his love. Another way of saying it is that God wills that we choose the highest good.  But does the will of God create this obligation?  Would we be under an obligation to will the highest good if God did not command it?  Should the good of being, knowing God, be our ultimate choice not because of the intrinsic value to God and the universe, but merely because God commanded or willed it?  We should see that knowing Him has value because of who He is not just because he commanded it.

However, I am glad you asked!  The answer is quite obvious.  Why should we say that disinterested benevolence is the universal duty of all and then say that the will of God is the ground of obligation?  Why would we hold that the highest good of being should be chosen because of its intrinsic value or for its own sake, knowing God, which makes it the ground or motive for obligation and then say that the will of God is the ground of our obligation to obey the moral law? 

Let’s think about this for a moment.  If the will of God is the foundation of obligation or the motive of life, then disinterested benevolence or agape love is sin.  If the will of God creates, not merely reveals, the ultimate end chosen, as we have seen for its own sake, namely the highest good of both God and of the universe in general, knowing God, then the will of God, not the interest and well being of God and of the universe, knowing God, should be chosen as the ultimate goal of life.  That would mean that God is consecrated to his own will, not to the highest good of his creatures, knowing Him.  This would mean that benevolence or agape love in God and in all other beings would be a sin since knowing Him is to love him and only obeying because it is his will would eliminate knowing God and loving him. I truly believe that this is why so many atheists and agnostics reject the notion of God.  They have been told that the will of God is the foundation of obligation and their thinking is this; what if God wills something that is not best for me and for the universe as a whole.  No rational intellectual person would welcome the will of God under these circumstances.  This would make benevolence which is sacrificial love (agape love) a sin. It would be requiring one to follow a God that they could not get to know and love. Who does not perceive that the arbitrary will of a sovereign God that is placed above the highest good of being or of the universe of moral beings places the will of God above the best ultimate end which is the highest well-being of the universe, knowing God? 

Remember that moral obligation means ultimate intentions, the choice of an ultimate end, knowing God.  The foundation of this obligation or the reason that this is chosen is what makes it our obligation to choose it. There is no other greater motive than that of knowing God and getting to know Him better every day.  This reason to choose an end is the ultimate end must be right or we can’t say that a true end was chosen. Nothing is more right than knowing God. The reason a goal was chosen and the end must be identical or it is not the ground of obligation.

So, if the will of God is the foundation of obligation, it must be the ultimate end or goal of choice.

This is impossible.  One cannot look at the will of God without wondering what the ultimate end or intention of that will is.  When you talk about the will of God you can’t get away from the fact that there must be an ultimate end which is chosen for its intrinsic value or God would not will that the particular goal should be chosen.  So when we say that the will of God is the ground we are saying that I should choose his willing as the ultimate end or ground of obligation.  Does God really want us to choose His willing as our ultimate end?  That would be willing His willing.  That would be a contradiction.  Moral law cannot be based upon our intentions and the will of God at the same time.  This would be absurd.  You can’t say moral law respects intentions and the will of God both at the same time.  God can’t will our willing any more than he can will His willing as the end of obligation.  Willing is never an end.  God can’t will our willing any more than we can will His willing.  There must be some other end or God could not will an end.  Thus the will of God cannot be the foundation of obligation.  He chooses something for a reason other than it is His will so our ground of obligation cannot be his will but the reason that he made the choice which is the goal he had in view which must be the intrinsic value of the good of being.  So lets review the first two points and then add others:

• If the will of God were the foundation of obligation, then agape love or disinterested benevolence is a sin, and knowing God that creates agape love is sin.

• If the will of God is the foundation of obligation, then God is requiring moral agents to choose his will as the foundation while he chooses for the ultimate end, the intrinsic value of the good of being, which would be absurd.

• If the will of God is the foundation of obligation, then God could change the nature of virtue or vice any time He wanted to do so just by willing something else.  This is why I reject every false religion because they have a false concept of who God is and of the foundation of obligation.  Allah, for example, has his will as the only foundation of obligation.  This explains why the suicide bombers can attack the World Trade Center and any other unsuspecting target in the world, cause extreme pain and anguish and the bomber thinks with all his heart that he will go to paradise simply because the will of Allah made what he did to be right.  Remember, the definition of the foundation of obligation says that even if God was to will that the intrinsic value of the good of being which would say that the intrinsic value of the lives of those in the World Trade Center were of no value, a moral agent would be required to choose the good of being over a will of a “god” that placed no value in the lives of those who they killed.

• If the will of God were the foundation of moral obligation then not only can God change the nature of virtue and vice by simply willing it, but he has a right to do so. This is because if there is nothing beyond God’s will for the choices that God makes then God can make good evil and evil good simply because he wills it to be so.  This must be the thinking of many who reject the notion of God.  They must think of God as a cruel tyrant that wills contrary to the good of being simply because it is his sovereign will.  This means that the will of God is what creates right and wrong, not the good of being, simply and only because He wills it to be so.

• If the will of God is the foundation of moral obligation then we have no standard by which we can judge the actions of God and there is no standard for the praise worthiness or blame worthiness of God.  With this logic, if God were a tyrant who required his creatures to be selfish and not benevolent, to kill and not love, to torture and not heal, he would be just as virtuous as a kind loving God that cared for the welfare of His creatures simply because he willed it to be so.  Namely, God could be a sadistic maniac and as long as it were His will, He would be right.

• If the will of God is the foundation of moral obligation, then God has no standard by which he can judge his own character and he has no rule other than his own will by which he can compare his actions to ascertain the vice or virtue of them.

• If the will of God is the foundation of moral obligation then he himself is not the subject of moral obligation, but rather,

• If God is not a subject of moral obligation Himself, then that means that God has no moral character since virtue and vice are merely conformity or non-conformity to moral obligation.  While it is true that the will of God, as expressed in his law, is the rule of duty to moral agents,  and that law marks out a path of duty, yet the fundamental reason why moral agents ought to act in conformity to the will of God is plainly not the will of God itself.  The best end that even God desires of all moral agents is for us to know Him, the best end.

• The will of no being can be law.  The moral law is something found in the reason of the divine purpose not in the will of any being in the universe.  If the will of any being were the law or the basis for a law, then that being could not be wrong by any stretch of the imagination.  He or she would be right simply because he or she willed it to be so.  That would be absurd and it would be a travesty of justice.

• Let’s see what the divine revelation of God says.  Isaiah 8:20  ”To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

 The law of God is the moral law.  As such it requires that God be loved with all the heart and that our neighbor be loved as ourselves. That always happens when someone comes to know God and his love. All would agree that the love here mentioned is not mere emotion but it consists in a choosing or willing, it means intention or the choice of something for its intrinsic value or in the choice of an ultimate end.  So what is this end?  What is it that we are to choose for its own intrinsic value?  Is it the will or command of God?  Should we will that God should will that we will?  What is more absurd than this?  What is more contradictory?  When we are commanded to love God and our neighbor what else could it be but to love the highest good or well being of both God and our neighbor? How could we love God unless we come to know Him and knowing him is what causes us to love and obey Him? Now that would be intrinsically valuable.  When one looks at it this way, this must be the end and there can be no other end.  There can be no philosophy that makes anything else the foundation of moral obligation besides knowing God. 

You may ask, then, why are we conscious of obeying the will of God without any other reference than that it is the will of God?  This, some say, proves that the will of God is the foundation of obligation.  We can reply that no one has said that we should not obey the will of God but only that the will of God cannot be the foundation of obligation for the reasons stated. We want to obey His will because we know Him. I am sure that there are many who read this that thought that the foundation of their obligation was the will of an arbitrary God willing only because it was his will.  What a relief it must be to think that God only wants the best for all his creatures and that the foundation of our obligation of moral law is to have the same goal as God which is to know Him and his love.

Let’s look at an example.  God wants me to labor and pray for the salvation of lost souls or some other thing.  I regard what he commands me to do as my obligation to God as a Christian. I do it because I know Him and He is the best thing that has ever happened to me and I want that blessing for others as well. I don’t consider it an arbitrary requirement but only the means of securing the end which is the highest good of being which I choose because of its intrinsic value. I want others to know him too. Because I consider the commandment of God to be wise and benevolent or loving, and only because I see it to be so, I consider it my obligation to obey Him.  If God would command me to do something that in my reasoning I would see to be of no intrinsic value I would feel no compulsion to obey Him.  If God would command me to do something that I considered to be unwise or malevolent, I, as a moral being, would feel it impossible to feel obliged to obey Him.  This proves that our reasoning does not regard His commands as the foundation of our obligation to obey him.  It also shows why so many reject God.  They don’t know that his will is not the foundation of obligation. They feel uncomfortable obeying the will of someone that they don’t know. It also shows why false religions such as Islam are so heinous. Their God never gets to know any of his subjects except his prophet and that only through an angel.  There is no getting to know Allah. They base their religion completely on the arbitrary will of a despotic fake “wanabee” god that is really an impostor trying to usurp the position of the true and living God who is a God of love and compassion.  Allah does not want anyone to know him because if they did they would find out that he is really Satan posing as a “god.”  God, on the other hand, wants all men to know Him.  He is a personal God.

If the will of God were the foundation of obligation, he might ask me to do things that are diametrically opposed to all that I hold dear and true.  God might ask me to be the enemy of all good and that I should be under obligation to obey him in something that makes my mind and heart revolt against for its absurdity.  So we can see that if the foundation of obligation is the good of being and the intrinsic value of this end, or knowing God, then the will of God can never be the foundation of moral obligation.  Arbitrary willing by anyone, God, you, me, or anyone else in the universe can never be the basis or foundation of moral obligation.  That is why our society is co weak today, because we have lost our compass and we have lost it mostly from the facts as we have disclosed here.  They see God as someone who arbitrarily wills his subjects to do what they don’t understand and not as a God who wants us to know Him.

When we examine this false theory of the foundation of obligation we can see why certain religions are false, because they make the foundation of obligation either the will of God or the will of the individual.  Let’s look at some of them:

1. Christianity is the only one that makes the foundation of obligation the intrinsic value of good to God and our neighbor the foundation which is described in the Bible as knowing God.

2. Mormonism makes the foundation of obligation the Book of Mormon and the will of the believer in their religion, they change the truth of God so you can’t know Him personally. They make Jesus a mere man.  Who could know God through a mere man?  They even become “gods” which is proof that they have a high level of self-gratification as their intrinsic value.

3. Spiritism makes the will of man the foundation of obligation as in the next theory, that of Paley.

4. Christian Science makes the will of man the foundation of obligation as in the next theory.

5. The Jehovah’s witness make the will of Jehovah the foundation of obligation, and since they also claim Jesus Christ as a man, they cannot know God since knowing Jesus is equivalent to knowing the father.  Thus they are not keeping the moral law.

6. The Unity Religion makes the will of man the foundation of obligation.

7. Theosophy makes the will of man the foundation of obligation.

8. Bahaism makes the writings of Bahaullah the foundation of obligation.

9. Zen Buddhism makes the will of man and the writings of Buddha the foundation of obligation.

10. Rosicrucianism makes the will of man the foundation of obligation.

11. Sweden Borgianism makes the writings of their leader, Emanuel Swedenborg the foundation of obligation.

12. Catholicism makes the will of the church and the writings of the Holy Fathers the foundation of obligation.

13. Humanism makes the will of man the foundation of obligation.

14. Unitarianism makes the will of man the foundation of obligation.

15. Islam makes the will of Allah the foundation of obligation.

16. Liberalism makes the will of the minority the foundation of obligation.

17. Scientology makes self the intrinsic value and they really have no definition for God nor a name for God so they have no idea who God is which is why they break the moral law.

Generally speaking all false religions either have the imposing will of a false “wannabe” god as the foundation of obligation or they have the will of the individual as the foundation of obligation.  This makes Christianity the only religion in the world that gets it right, knowing the one true God, disinterested benevolence which comes from God’s love.