2009 – Biblical Fundamentalism

Whereas Biblical Fundamentalism has always rested upon the exclusive authority of the Bible as God's perfect and complete revelation of Himself to man, whereby man can be reconciled to God and which provides a path of obedience to God for man to keep in fellowship with God, and

Whereas Biblical Fundamentalism unreservedly accepts all that the Bible has to say about itself and the person and work of Jesus Christ and that Biblical Fundamentalists interpret literally all the truths of the Scriptures, including Christ's eternal deity and perfect humanity, His virgin birth, His vicarious and substitutionary death on the cross to redeem man from sin, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and His personal return to rule on this earth, and

Whereas attacks upon the authority and veracity of the Word of God from various sources have increasingly drawn particular aim upon the doctrine of Biblical separation, Biblical Fundamentalists must continue in obedience to the Word of God, including the exposure and separation from all that is contrary to its whole counsel, and “earnestly contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and condemn any and all additions or subtractions to the Holy Scriptures whether in writing or in practice, and

Whereas there is also an advancing trend to either ignore, or water down, the clear teaching in Scripture regarding both personal and ecclesiastical separation, as demonstrated by many organizations and movements that have abandoned their separatist foundations in favor of compromise and broader appeal to worldly people, and

Whereas the practice of theological inclusivism and the acceptance of immature and worldly church members have only served to corrupt the testimony of fundamentalism and transform Separation into a relic of church history,

Be it, therefore, resolved that, for such a time as this, we, the members of the Independent Baptist Fellowship of North America meeting in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, on June 23-25, 2009, reaffirm our historic separatist position by obeying what God says plainly in His Word.

We further resolve both personally, and in our ministries, to do all we can to conform to those Scriptures which command us to separate from those “who are otherwise minded” (Philippians 3:15) and “mark them” (Philippians 3:17, 18), “avoid them” (Romans 16:17, 18), “from such turn away” (II Timothy 3:5), “reprove them” (Ephesians 5:11), “have no fellowship with them” (Ephesians 5:11), “be not equally yoked together with” them (II Corinthians 6:14-16), “come out from among them” (II Corinthians 6:17), “reject” them (Titus 3:10), “note” them (II Thessalonians 3:14), “withdraw yourself” from them (I Timothy 6:5), “have no company with” them (II Thessalonians 3:14), “rebuke them sharply” (Titus 1:13), and “keep not company” with them (I Corinthians 5:11).

We finally resolve that we will uphold one another in prayer and encourage one another in the things of God so that we may we be “approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of God.” (II Timothy 2:15)