The Reading Room - History

The Bible Presbyterian Position on Ecclesiastical Separation

Introduction • The Historic Background of the 20th Century Reformation
• The BP Stance on Biblical Separation

By: Gary G. Cohen, Th.D. (Professor of Bible - Cohen University)

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or all its more than seventy-year history the Bible Presbyterian Church has been best known nationally and internationally as consistently standing for ecclesiastical separation. The Bible Presbyterian Church has a testimony over the last two thirds of the twentieth century for separation away from those who deny the tenets of the historic Christian faith, and from those groups who, while they may be sound themselves, befriend the deniers of the faith—commonly labeled as “neo-evangelicals.”

Here we are speaking of “ecclesiastical” not “personal” separation. That is, we are dealing with church alliances and support, not with an individual Christian’s personal separation from the things of the world. Ecclesiastical separation consists of a believer or an organized church not joining or helping an apostate church; or, if he or she is in one, they are to come out of it. This also implies that believing churches and organizations will not join, remain in, or assist denominations or groups who are not true to the Christ of the Bible. Jude exhorts us,

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).

Thus, we must not only stay out of the apostate groups ourselves, but Jude declares that we also have a duty to testify (“earnestly contend”) against them. Here too, the Bible Presbyterian Church has not only separated from the ungodly, but it has had a testimony over the years, of giving a militant warning to the Christians to “come out from among them” (2 Cor 6:17).

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