SEPARATION

It is often assumed that DMLJ was a “separatist” and that his intention was to break up the churches in the UK.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  What he was concerned to do was to bring Christians together, all those whose loyalty was to the Gospel.  He wanted to see evangelicals brought together, to work together, to worship together, to witness together.  He longed and worked for true evangelical unity.  He did not want to see evangelicals scattered all over the place in church denominations that either themselves did not hold to historic Christianity, or tolerated ministers who did not only not hold to historic Christianity, but who went out of their way to undermine and distort and eventually destroy biblical Christianity.  He longed to bring them all together.

But what happened instead.  Many men decided that denominational loyalty was much more important than the gospel.  Their emotional attachments to their denomination were so strong that they preferred to stay where the Gospel was no longer welcome, than come together with other evangelicals who loved that Gospel.

That being so, it was not those who came out of their denominations who were the schismatics, but those who stayed in, and who refused to come together in evangelical unity.  It was not those who came together into a Christian and evangelical grouping who were the separatists, but those who refused to come together with them.  Such evangelicals were being fundamentally inconsistent.  They were the separatists, because it was they who preferred the company of Gospel deniers than the fellowship of Gospel believers.