Here I Stand!

BY Duane Spencer
This is a confession of one whose heart is fully assured that he is a called bond slave of Christ, equip-ped by God for the task of expounding sound doctrine, and willing to labor long, arduous hours to discover what Scripture says without relying upon the theories and conclusions of men.

A number of years ago I, as a Methodist preacher, held and preached Arminian doctrine, which holds that predestination was condi
tioned by God's foreknowledge of human free choices. In those first eight years of my preaching ministry I drew great crowds wherever I went. I held forty-eight "revivals" in those years, an average of one every other month, while building new buildings and renovating sanctuaries. For my ego they were "great years".

When I became aware that Arminian doctrine was heresy and adopted the position of a "four-point Calvinist", teaching that man's "free will"
has a part in his salvation through decision-making, my ministry still drew crowds. Having left the Methodist Church to start a nondenominational Bible church, I was preaching as much as fourteen times a week. People flocked from every denomination in the city to what I called the "City-Wide Bible Classes". I pounded the dispensational view of C.I. Scofield into their heads, and they loved every minute of it.

Echoing idols. Those who have read my "little gold Word Key" booklets know that I merely echoed such well known dispensationalists as Scofield, Walvoord, and Pentecost. They were my idols. I never questioned their authority...until one day I began to study Scripture "to see if these things were so".

Over a period of several years I began to have problems. I found that what Mr. Scofield said about the rapture and Second Coming of Christ and the "thousand year reign" disagreed with what my Bible said. I kept on teaching what my idols said, though, in spite of the continuing conflicts I discovered in Holy Writ.

One day, as I was completing a series of analyses of the doctrines relating to Election and Predestination, I knew that the time had come for me to admit that four-point Calvinism was not Biblical. I labored night and day, besides my other work as pastor of Grace Bible Church, hammering out my convictions.

I also hammered it out in the local pulpit. The attendance began to fall off. Precious friends of years, who felt their "free will" was being taken from them, left the church to find another fellowship where their "decision for Christ", without the act of
God regenerating them first, would be honored.

TULIP. Finally, my book TULIP was ready for the press. (Editor's note: TULIP is the acronym for Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the saints.) When it was published, and went on the air, over ten thousand faithful listeners to The Word of Grace broadcasts deserted me. The sudden drop in support nearly bankrupted the ministry, but God was merciful and raised up other supporters of the Reformed faith in the place of those who dropped out.

While lying on my back in the hospital, recuperating slowly from a heart attack that the doctors thought would surely kill me, I knew that I had another step to take. I was convinced that my teaching for years of a "secret rapture" seven years before the Second Coming was a hideous deception. Although my dispensationalist idols all declared that the church would be caught up before the great tribulation, I, who had also preached it for years, knew now that there was not an honest shred of evidence in the Bible for that.

There was not one single verse, for example, which taught a secret rapture. In fact, the old favorite of the dispensationalists, I Thessalonians 4:15, says just the opposite. It declares that some will be alive and remain unto the parousia of Christ, a technical term for the Lord's Second Coming in power and great glory.

Thousand years. Having spent nearly twenty-five years on the study of Semitic symbols, I also knew that Revelation 20 had nothing to do with an earthly 1000-year reign of Christ in "this world", with the resurrection of the righteous before it and that of the wicked afterward.

I was faced with an either/or situationeither teach the truth as I saw it, and lose more friends and more financial support, perhaps even my pastorate in the church which God used me to found back in 1963; or cling to my then-stabilized situation in church and radio ministry, and be called home for loving the world and the security offered by preaching what people wanted to hear.

God was merciful. He set my heart fast to preach His Word exactly as the Spirit led me to understand it. And, just as I knew it would, it really cost.

Members of Grace Bible Church began to leave, a few here and a few there, as I hammered out my convictions that the Rapture will take place at the Second Coming; that there is a general resurrection of all the dead; that the thousand years of Revelation 20 speaks of the period between the two comings of Christ; that the "first resurrection" is that of the elect's spirits out from among "the rest of the dead" in trespasses and sins; that the "my brethren" in Matthew 25 speaks of the body of believers; that there will be no messianic kingdom in this world, but, rather, one in "the new earth" that follows the Second Coming; and that the Old Testament Church and the New Testament Church are a single household of God made up of regenerated Jews and Gentiles both.

Repercussion. As the word studies on eschatology began to go out over the air, "Christian radio stations" began to force me off their airwaves
right and left. Although they were willing to broadcast persons of every variety of theology, just as long as it agreed basically with dispensationalism, my a-millennial position in eschatology and my limited atonement position in soteriology, was more than they would bear.

Several admitted: "If we leave your broadcast on our station, our listeners will cease their support of our institution. We're sorry, but we cannot afford to lose our financial support."

Several thousand more listeners to the Word of Grace broadcast ceased their financial support. More members left the church. I was paying the price I knew had to be paid.

But, wonderfully enough, I was rejoicing in the Lord more than I had ever been before. We cut off stations that were no longer paying their way, and tightened our belt in every way we could. The tribulation through which we were passing was good for us. We were "losing weight" in the sense that all excess baggage was being chopped off, just to keep the ministry afloat.

New blessings. Now, by the grace of God, a new audience is slowly building up. To my delight I am finding that there are many more of the Reformed faith who agree with my position on Scripture, and all of us are keeping good company with the great Protestant Reformers!

I felt a great need to share these things with you because several have written to say: "I've been a regular supporter of yours for years. I have all of your 'little gold Word Key' booklets. Now I find that you are not teaching the same things about the second coming, etc., as you used to. Please explain why you have changed your position on these things.î

This article is my answer in a nutshell. I have come to my present conclusion by studying the words of the Word of God. I am captive of the Word of God, and neither devil nor man can persuade me to teach that which I am convinced is contrary to it.

Here I stand, so help me God. o

The late Dr. Duane Spencer was the Bible Teacher of the Word of Grace radio ministry, P. O. Box 7, San Antonio, Texas 78291.

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