"Keeping The Record Straight"
If anyone has ever accused Brother B. C. Goodpasture of being a logician, his editorial, "Keeping The Record Straight", in the Gospel Advocate of June 25, 1959, ought to make his accuser ashamed of ever having made such a ridiculous charge.
The proof that a great host of timeservers and moral cowards will follow Goodpasture down the broad road of popularity regardless of how crummy his logic (?) may be is so abundant that it cannot be denied successfully. Perhaps Goodpasture knows this too. That may be the reason why he is so careless and shallow in his editorials.
To see turncoats like Earl West, John Cox, Rex Turner and several others bow down in Goodpasture's "confessional", kiss his toe and confess that such reasoning as displayed in his recent editorial has caused them to "change" is more than nauseating.
In defense of the various types of benevolent societies which are receiving donations from church treasuries, Brother Goodpasture makes the same old threadbare argument that the Digressives have been making in defense of the missionary societies for seventy five years. He begins by stating that "Christians are instructed 'to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction' (James 1:27); but the passage does not tell how it is to be done". Then he jumps to the erroneous conclusion that a benevolent society is a "method" of visiting the fatherless and widows.
He rambles on with his old Digressive contention: "Christ commanded his disciples to 'go into all the world and preach the gospel'; but he did not say how they were to go." The Digressives have said the same thing thousands of times then jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the missionary society is a "method" of going and therefore scriptural, just precisely as Goodpasture reached the conclusion that the benevolent society is scriptural. Why Goodpasture cannot see that this is true is beyond me. But maybe he does see it, and is trying to defend and justify the missionary society in the same way he would justify church donations to the benevolent societies. Brother Goodpasture, what is wrong with the missionary society?
The thing that Brother Goodpasture and the other Digressives need to learn is this: The benevolent society is not a "method" of visiting the indigent, it is an institution that employs methods of visiting. The missionary society is not a "method" of going to preach the gospel, it is an institution that employs methods of going. When churches surrender their resources to benevolent or missionary societies those societies still must select and employ methods of visiting and going. Does Brother Goodpasture think that the missionary society is more able than the church of the Lord in selecting and using methods of going? Does he think that a benevolent society can do a better job of selecting and employing methods of "visiting" than the church in Jerusalem did in Acts 6:1-6?
His little dissertation in his editorial on general and specific commands shows how little he knows about the subject. He thinks that a man-made benevolent institution is a specific of the generic term "visit", just like supplying food, clothing, shelter and other needs are specifics of the generic, "visit". Other digressives think that a man-made missionary society is a specific of the generic term "go", just like riding, walking, sailing, etc. are specifics of the generic, "go".
Yes, Brother Goodpasture, "wood" is a generic term and it has many specifics — hickory, gopher, maple, etc. God selected the specific "gopher", and that forbade Noah's using any other specific — any other kind of wood. But you and the Christian Church digressives, in order to justify your contention that churches may build and maintain human benevolent and missionary societies through which to do the work assigned by the Lord, must prove that Noah had a divinely given right to build a cow barn in which to save the cows, chickens and pigs from the deluge. When God said make an "ark" of gopher wood, that forbade his using his gopher wood to build cow barns and pigsties in which to save anything from the flood. Can't you see that?
Brother Goodpasture closes his piece by charging that those who oppose his church donations to the societies have not told him how the church ought to take care of its indigent. He ought to read the Gospel Guardian. I and many others have written many articles on how churches should care for their poor. If he is afraid to read the Gospel Guardian, I suggest that he read and study Acts 6:1-6. There he can learn how the Jerusalem church provided for its poor. Also, I have written a 52 page booklet, CENTRALIZED CONTROL OF CHURCH RESOURCES, in which I answered every question I could think of on how the church should provide for its indigent. I will send him a copy, if he will send me 25. I pay for his shallow articles in the Advocate; why shouldn't he pay for my booklet?
If Brother Goodpasture can find a human benevolent society in either James 1:27 or Acts 6:1-6, and if the editor of the Christian Standard can find a human missionary society in the Great Commission of Mark 16:15,16, then neither of them should have any trouble at all in finding a cow barn in Gen. 6:14.