Sunday Schools
Old Regular Baptist believe, that God places the responsibility of bringing children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord,belongs to the parents,we believe that children have a sinful nature by birth, and know how to do wrong, without any teaching, we because of that fallen nature , must teach them morals of right and wrong, the conscience is also fallen, it can accuse or excuse, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, Proverbs tells us alot about children and how they must be corrected,etc.. the churches duty is to preach and to teach all that come under the sound of the gospel,we have no example of placing children in seperate classrooms away from their parents in worship,God has one gospel and there is food there for the young as well as the old.if they have the Spirt,and ears to hear with ,it will bring blessings upon them, if they have not recieved a hearing, then the moral message of the truth will benefit their natural life, children learning scripture is not harmful,but it takes the same Spirt that wrote it, to understand it, for now it is just a book of rules but after God Quickens them its a book filled with life.I was raised by an old Regular Baptist, my Dad was a lay member, he read the bible to us at a very young age,we had family prayer in our home,sang hyms, I went to long church services, I saw the effects of the Spirt upon people, I was taught more by example in those meetings than, I ever learned by the letter, I saw women who lived in poverty, poor in this world's goods who looked like they had nothing by nature, when the gospel trump begin to sound they forgot all that poverty, and would rise to their feet and begin to shout prasies to their king and tell of his mercy and grace and act like children of the King, and I never forgot it, and as a child I wondered what they must feel, I saw them wash each others feet, baptisms, I can tell you sermons I heard as a child and who preached them, old time songs and who sung them. The Lords voice spoke to me when I was 16. I heard that voice and was rasied from the dead state I was in by nature,believed that he is a rewarder of them that dilgently seek him, was led by God goodness to repentence through a Godly Sorrow given a lively hope in Christ, joined. the Pleasant View Church in 1980 at 17 years old.We do not believe that being a christian is something man can cultivate through a man made system but rather by being borned again ,Eternal Life is a gift of God ,that is not of works(mans anyway ).Why we believe in instructing our children this has nothing to do with their eternal salvation,nor do we think we can pray them into heaven, a carnal mind is not subject to the laws of God,the natural man recieveth not the things that be of the spirt neither can he know them.That why we don't have preachers schools to teach someone how to preach, we believe it is neither learned of man nor taught of man but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. In the SGA some of our churches have more young people than old people, and I am very thankful for it, the Elders at that church spend alot of time teaching as well as preaching from the pulpit, they meet at each others houses and teach also ,like Paul ,I taught you publickly and from house to house, This church has services every Sunday evening and on the 2nd sun morn.and I believe thats a good thing, not all of our churches can do this yet.Regular Baptist should have seperated their children from the public schools when they started down the secular humanistic road and threw God,s name out, they could have easily used their church buildings and have given their children a more God centered education, at Blessed Hope several of the members home school, and in the Rock Fork area Regular Baptist are involved with an independent Christ centered school, not as an auxilliary of the church but seperate, using the churches buildings to teach in. This I have no objection to seeing how the public schools have went down the broad road, and they spend more time with our children than we do.When I joined PV there were a lot of young people, many of them became distraught over the fighting and politics of the Old Regulars and left, some still remain, but this still remains an issue. Old Regular Baptist won't preach with each other even at funerals,this has caused a lot of hurt, they have preached against horseshoes ,playing ball,etc... yet most of them have televisions( not all) that condem those who play games with ther children now granted there can be a wrong spirt in sports activities and losing would be the christian thing to do, but television can do much harm if not guarded, a lot more harmful than horseshoes.The different factions of Old Regular have no official communication with one anthor, and often talk negative about each other , in an unchartiable way this hurts old and alike, we do not provide entertainment in our churches for the flesh to enjoy and many go to the false churches that do.Sunday School would be adding to the word of God, teaching would be in keeping with the word of God and should be do in a bilblical manner. Bro.Slone
