Why should I consider going to a Bible college?

Is it necessary to go to a seminary or Bible school to be trained for Christian service? […] [There] is nothing in God's Word to indicate that one must have such train­ing to become fitted as a servant of God. Organisations and denominations might require such a background, but God does not.

Gifts are given by the Lord to those whom He calls, but they are not fully perfected. The gift needs to be perfected and developed by a long and steady growth in the school of God. When the Lord calls one for His work, He puts that one in His school and does the training Himself in various ways and circumstances and by various instruments under His supervision. God would have us learn one from another in His school also. We are to profit from the experiences of others. This is the school of practical experience from which the servant never graduates, but goes on serving and learning day by day in communion with his Master, the most patient, gracious, and thorough Teacher of teachers. In this school one serves and works for the Lord as he learns, and learns as he serves. Practice is combined with theory and truth is learned in the heart as well as in the head, as it ever must be.

This practical school of God is the only training school for Christ's servants with divine sanction, which is found in the Bible, and it is still the only school that can properly train and fit His servants today. No school or college of human device can improve upon God's way for His ministers. There is no education like that which comes by learning at the Master's feet and in daily contact with men.

These smiths might well answer to what we have later in Israel's history — the schools of the prophets, places where the fire and the hammer of God's word and truth are applied under the direction of the Holy Spirit. They would thus correspond to all proper and scriptural means for developing activity among God's saints. Might we not say that, in their place, institutions of learning would answer to these smiths' shops, where furnishing in the knowledge of the languages in which the word of God is written, and other truths, would equip one to be a diligent seeker in the Word? Thus, schools and colleges, when in proper hands and used in faith, are most helpful in developing an ability to dig into the word of God. The same is true of all assembly fellowship. Where the Spirit of God is ungrieved, how much spiritual furnishing do we get from association together! We can see, then, what it is for all this to be in the hands of the Philistines. And has not that been the case all too often in the history of God's saints? Nay, may we not say that it is that which particularly characterizes them at the present day, religious formalism having charge of all education, both elementary and advanced, and even, in great measure, of the people of God?

But on the other hand every true minister of Christ will hunger for greater fitness, and a fuller knowledge. It will be, however, knowledge of the word of God which he craves, and to that he will give time and prayer beyond all else. I need hardly refer to educational institutions most of the secular, and alas many of the religious, are in the hands of the enemy. Where infidelity is taught, where the word of God is dissected and criticized — these are not places for godly youth to learn the truth and ways of God. If they go there, it should be as doubly armed against all the subtlety of the enemy. Sad, indeed, it is to give such a warning; sadder still the necessity for it.

Then too, as to reading of truly helpful books, of association with Christ's servants, of individual study under the eye of some one of experience — all this is of the greatest value and help, when once the one great fact is learned — the absolute necessity of the Spirit's presence and power. This is not the place for discussion of these matters. We do not find them treated in Scripture, though much is scriptural in them. My conviction is that large numbers of students in one institution, with nothing to engage their activities save study, will not develop so rapidly and so surely as smaller companies gathered less formally, for briefer seasons and with much work for the Lord interspersed between the times of study. We are living in days of great institutions, richly endowed, with brilliant professors and attractive courses of study. The danger is lest the Holy Person of whom we speak be forgotten. Let us pray that it may not be.

If we allow God to call and train His servants, we will have a divinely-constituted ministry, taken from all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest and fitted to reach all sorts and conditions of men without the aid of a religious college. We shall have the greatest intellects expounding the Word as they learned it on their knees and simple ones spelling out the message in the same manner.

In most of the present day theological colleges and seminaries a maximum of human learning is imparted with a minimum of Bible teaching. And it is in these very places that Modernism, with its Satanic attacks against the holy Scriptures and the very foundations of the true Christian faith, has rooted itself and is being taught to those who are to become the future ministers. The result is that their faith in the Bible is undermined and they, in turn, go out with teaching that will lead souls to perdition. Such is one result of introducing a plan contrary to the Lord's method of teaching His servants.

Thus the help of the Christian pair was as welcome to Apollos as they were needed to supply the defects of his instruction. And we may observe how distant and different were the means employed of God from the formal methods of a divinity school. Can the moderns boast of superior efficiency? This may well be doubted by those who know what fertile hotbeds of heterodoxy theological schools have proved in all ages and lands, Protestant as well as Catholic or any other. They may be more or less learned, they may cultivate for a few terms Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and the like; they may teach their own peculiar traditions and dogmas, with the commonplaces of theology, they may exercise their students in composition and elocution. But the truth of God must be known by faith, and to faith only can it be entrusted profitably; and these are commodities so rare in the schools as never to be reckoned on, though of course now and then to be found there, but even where they enter, all is unfavourable for growth: so encumbered are they with that which is extraneous and human. The means afforded by grace to Apollos, and recorded for our guidance by the inspiring Spirit, would, I fear, find scant favour in the eyes of the professors, or even of the divinity students, that believe; and would be assuredly scorned by all who believe not, whether leaders or led.

Of course, the ultimate test of the truth of any doctrine is whether it is in accord with biblical revelation. The fact that the church taught something in the first century does not make it true, and, likewise, if the church did not teach something until the twentieth century, it is not necessarily false. Tertullian, Anseim, Luther, Calvin, Darby, Scofield, and the Westminster divines were all instruments in the hands of God to minister truth to His church, but none of them was perfect in all his thinking. People do not make a doctrine right or wrong. Defective life never enhances doctrine, but neither does it necessarily falsify it. Earning a doctors degree may make one an expert in a particular field of study, but it does not make one infallible or without need of further light on a given subject. An understanding of the truth of the Bible can be communicated by the Holy Spirit in and through the formal education situation and procedures, and it can be communicated apart from them.

Of preparation for ministry I need say little. The main preparation is in the secret life and with the word of God. An education, even an intellectual knowledge of Scripture, is not preparation for the ministry. Far be it from me to decry true knowledge. Let us covet to know more and more. Let us seek ability to read the Scriptures in the original tongues; let us study history, archaeology — everything that can illustrate the truths of God; let us know more of that world of nature all about us, that speaks of God and of Christ to the attentive and devout soul. But these are not necessarily the preparation for ministry. The Spirit of God may use any and all of these, but He and He alone can prepare a man for ministry.

How often has He done a vast work in the conversion of souls through some "unlearned and ignorant" man. How often has the humble artisan a deeper, broader knowledge of divine truth than the learned professor. Surely God will stain the pride of man, He will not let us boast. It ever remains that the Holy Spirit amply qualifies every vessel whom He may choose for the ministry. Do not be afraid that the ardent young evangelist, on fire with love to God and souls, will fail to be used because his grammar is not perfect and he knows but "one thing." Ah, brethren, the man who knows one thing is the man who will speak in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

We hear constantly of a young man intending to go into the ministry. Now fully granting the honesty of the intention, the very expression shows the popular feeling in the matter. Let such a well-intentioned young man be sent to a university, or academy, or institution, and after a few years becomes forth as an accredited minister. Now all this appears a direct taking of ministry out of the hands of the Lord Jesus into our own hands. We should see the folly of a pious Israelite sending his son to be educated for a prophet, as if God needed human preparation for the instrument he would use. And surely to educate for the ministry is equally or more preposterous in a dispensation in which the Holy Spirit, as sovereign divider of His own gifts, is especially manifested.

We read of Samuel being "established as a prophet of the Lord," but all his education under the aged and indulgent Eli could never have furnished him with what he was commissioned to reveal. We find Paul thanking the Lord for "putting him into the ministry," and unto this his education under Gamaliel profited not. It is not whether one whom the Lord has put into the ministry, may use the aids within his reach to enable him more efficiently to work, for we find Paul not only exhorting Timothy to stir up the gift he had received, but likewise telling him "till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;" but, whether the most vigilant and wise training can make a minister of Christ.

As in the case of the prophets, Jehovah had His servants among those brought up in the schools of the prophets — so surely the Holy Ghost as the sovereign dispenser of gifts of ministry has raised up many from universities and academies to bear witness to Jesus; but always with the grand characteristic of His teaching, the setting aside, and in the background, of all advantages derived from such sources, on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, which He teaches. We may smile at the disputations and subtilties of the schoolmen of a former day, but the principle is the same. It is not whether better instruction is afforded in the schools now, but whether the schools themselves are not institutions of man, for the provision of that which the Lord Jesus most jealously keeps in His own hand. It is not to the purpose to say that many of the most faithful ministers have been raised up out of these schools; this is not denied; because the Holy Spirit will not allow human arrangements to interfere with His own sovereignty. But if these schools furnish a supply of men accredited as ministers, they must necessarily exert a powerful human influence, much more so than perhaps we are disposed to allow. We have seen the Lord raising up prophets, and men having prophets of their own; and the prophet of the Lord brought into instant collision with the prophets of the people. Jesus, as ascended, gives teachers to the church, and men have provided for teachers in the church. May we not then most reasonably expect that the teachers the Lord has given will find the greatest hindrance from those whom man has provided for himself?

The prophet was not an integral part of the former dispensation, but only came in on the failure of the priesthood; but ministry is the very power of this dispensation (Eph. 4); "pastors, teachers, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Now if God has provided this in one way, even by distinct gift of the Spirit, and man has substituted another way, we see what necessarily must be the result, even the most fearful form of apostasy. "The beast and the false prophet" go together, the former could not prevail without the help of the other. Professing Christians could not easily be persuaded to tell a lie, unless they had found those who would teach them after human tradition, instead of the plain word of God. And nothing could be devised more effectually to stifle enquiry and to lull the conscience, than a humanly accredited ministry, teaching things only which the hearers expect to hear. When this is the case, the solemn responsibility of speaking and hearing are alike forgotten. And the very means provided for blessing is by Satan's craft turned into a hindrance. We hear constantly of a young man intending to go into the ministry. Now fully granting the honesty of the intention, the very expression shows the popular feeling in the matter. Let such a well-intentioned young man be sent to a university, or academy, or institution, and after a few years he comes forth as an accredited minister. Now all this appears a direct taking of ministry out of the hands of the Lord Jesus into our own hands. We should see the folly of a pious Israelite sending his son to be educated for a prophet, as if God needed human preparation for the instrument He would use. And surely to educate for the ministry is equally more preposterous in a dispensation in which the Holy Spirit, as sovereign divider of His own gifts, is especially manifested.

We read of Samuel being "established as a prophet of the Lord," but all his education under the aged and indulgent Eli could never have furnished him with what he was commissioned to reveal. We find Paul thanking the Lord for "putting him into the ministry," and unto this his education under Gamaliel profited not. It is not whether one whom the Lord has put into the ministry may use the aids within his reach to enable him more efficiently to work, for we find Paul not only exhorting Timothy to stir up the gift he had received but likewise telling him "till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;" but, whether the most vigilant and wise training can make a minister of Christ. If it be allowed that the various ministries in the church are distinct gifts, then the recognition of the gift must precede the education, if indeed that be needed. And it would be no longer saying, "I think of entering into the ministry," but, "woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel! " The very worst evil of human institutions for supplying ministers is the effect they have of weakening the sense of responsibility to the Lord in the exercise of ministry. And if ministry be not exercised responsibly unto Him, it is not received in responsibility to Him. "Take heed how ye hear." And the result is, that instead of ministry being regarded as that which is for the health of the church, ministers are regarded for their own sake. And trivial as it may be, the practical difference between regarding ministers or ministry is very great. We have seen in two former instances, the accredited organs of religious instruction — the prophets before the captivity, and the scribes and lawyers during the time of our Lord's ministry, all arrayed against the truth. We have solemn warning as to the parallel to be exhibited at the close of this dispensation. And surely it is not too much to say, that the virtual rejection of the Lordship of Jesus and of the sovereignty of the Spirit in the gift of ministry, has prepared the way for a most unhealthy state of mind in the great majority of Christians, who are prepared to receive no more truth than that which human institutions have thought fit to supply. And it may be safely affirmed, that ignorance of scripture does very generally prevail, and so much insubjection of mind to the word of God, that a plain declaration of scripture is set aside by its supposed contrariety to some received dogma.