Introducing The Spurgeon Underground

Welcome to the blog of The Spurgeon Underground. This fellowship of Brothers Advocating Sola Scriptura is composed of men who hold to the practice of believer's baptism and are active members in their local churches serving as pastors, missionaries, deacons, teachers, or in training at various Seminaries preparing for ministry and missions.

This fellowship exists to uphold and advocate the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, one of the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation. This first sola, "Scripture Alone", is the foundation of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) which begins: "The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience."

Further, we believe that it is necessary for the church today to return to this Biblical and Reformational Truth. We agree wholeheartedly with The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals who have written in The Cambridge Declaration:

Scripture alone is the inerrant rule of the church's life, but the evangelical church today has separated Scripture from its authoritative function. In practice, the church is guided, far too often, by the culture. Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world often have far more to say about what the church wants, how it functions and what it offers, than does the Word of God. Pastors have neglected their rightful oversight of worship, including the doctrinal content of the music. As biblical authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have faded from Christian consciousness, and as its doctrines have lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied of its integrity, moral authority and direction.

Rather than adapting Christian faith to satisfy the felt needs of consumers, we must proclaim the law as the only measure of true righteousness and the gospel as the only announcement of saving truth. Biblical truth is indispensable to the church's understanding, nurture and discipline.

Scripture must take us beyond our perceived needs to our real needs and liberate us from seeing ourselves through the seductive images, cliches, promises and priorities of mass culture. It is only in the light of God's truth that we understand ourselves aright and see God's provision for our need. The Bible, therefore, must be taught and preached in the church. Sermons must be expositions of the Bible and its teachings, not expressions of the preacher's opinions or the ideas of the age. We must settle for nothing less than what God has given.

The work of the Holy Spirit in personal experience cannot be disengaged from Scripture. The Spirit does not speak in ways that are independent of Scripture. Apart from Scripture we would never have known of God's grace in Christ. The biblical Word, rather than spiritual experience, is the test of truth.

We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation,which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.

We deny that any creed, council or individual may bind a Christian's conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience can ever be a vehicle of revelation.

We then, the Spurgeon Underground, believe that the Bible is our sole sufficient, infallible, inerrant, and inspired authority for all doctrine and practice. We do not reject biblical commentaries, creeds, confessions or other writings by committed believers, but we hold them all accountable to the "whole counsel of God" as found only in the Holy Scriptures. Because we believe in the doctrine of salvation as taught by the Scripture - by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone - we are also strongly committed to what is commonly called the Doctrines of Grace or Reformed Theology.

It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the works we present here, that discussion will be sparked, the Scriptures diligently studied, and that God will glorify Himself as we seek to exalt and magnify Him through the hearing and doing of His Word.