JD: Do you still identify as an evangelical?
DJ: Well here’s the way I put it I qualify it. Evangelical is helpful as long as people understand what you mean and so what I say is that I am historically conservative evangelical. And what I mean by that is that my theology has not changed it goes back to things that were even identified a hundred years ago in a series of pamphlets and booklets that were entitled the fundamentals. Now I don’t use fundamentalist because now that term has been hijacked by those who would fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up. But my theology is definitely fundamentalist.
What I mean by
historical evangelical, what I mean is I believe that the Bible is the word of
God it must be understood literally. I believe in the virgin birth. I believe
in the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation and that everyone
must hear, understand, and believe the gospel to be saved. I believe that the
Bible is the only authority for life in practice of believers. I think we have
a responsibility to disciple people in the understanding of the word of God and
that we have a responsibility to reach the world with the message of the word
of God and we should disciple people. And also I believe that it’s important to
understand properly what the Bible holds in store for the future with a pre-tribulational pre-millennial return of Jesus Christ.
JD: Therefore it seems that there’s a difference between
theology evolving versus theology deepening. Over this time and once again
these things can happen but it comes down to actually as we always do bottom line
how do we interpret the Bible?
DJ: Our theology should not be evolving into something that does
not resemble what has been held in the past based upon the word of God. Of
course we come to a greater and deeper understanding of the Bible over time and
God and his word and what it means to be a believer in Christ. It’s a matter of
deepening and we stand on the shoulders of giants. But we still have to come
down to a literal, grammatical, historical understanding of the word of God and
that we hold fast and that’s where we put down our stake. This is what we
believe, this is where we stand and we will not move because the word of God does
not change, God himself does not change, and his word does not change.
JD: David James with the Biblical approach to the term in the
church community today evangelicalism.
We report this information because it is setting the stage
for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.
David James gave us a great Biblical definition for the term
evangelicalism. Our doctrine must come from God’s word the Bible. II Timothy
3:16 states that all scripture is given by God and is profitable in addition
to that prophetic as well. It helps us to understand the end of times.
