Years ago, the Northwest District consisted of the states of Washington, Idaho and Oregon. The NW District purchased property in North Portland and created Conqueror's Bible College. After ID, OR and WA became their own districts, the school's board consisted of the DS of each district and a couple of other members of their respective districts and the president and administrator of the school. The board met to strategize learning content and process, finances and curriculum. Eventually the personality of each district began to manifest itself. Oregon got Californicated ("Don't Californicate Oregon!" Ruby Rutzen), Idaho was considered loose and very nearly heretical regarding her eschatalogy and PCI-leaning views on
Acts 2:38, and Washington was in an "every man for himself" mode. At one time the largest church in the NW was Gene Ziemke's (a CBC alum)
World of Pentecost. He got knocked down a few pegs by his "elders" over his position on standards. In the early 1980's I recall vividly a conversation my former pastor relayed to Mike Tuttle and me in talking about the looseness of Ziemke's position, mentioned a conversation he had at a General Conference with another preacher how to "Get them back" (to holiness), where the other preacher said, "Bro. ____, you never get them back".
Besides the holiness angle there was the angle of eschatalogy. CBC may have taught orthodox dispensationalism (now THAT's an oxymoron!), but some of their alumni were not nearly as rigid. The year the FMB refused to re-appoint Wayne Nigh to Germany was over his eschatalogy. Mike Tuttle commented to me (he met the FMB for an appointment to Holland, I believe, at the same time) of something Br Judd had said that no one had ever been interviewed by the FMB as long as Bro Nigh had been. What this tells me is that the eschatalogy issue was HQ driven and carried on by the likes of Winifred Toole, David Johnson, B.A. King, Phil and Paul Dugas, etc, in Portland.
Given the fact in the late 70s that military veterans were returning from Germany (from under Alvin Cobb and Wayne Nigh's tutelage) to CBC meant that these saints were arriving at CBC with a completely different world view than their dispensational brethren. Some were more outspoken than others. It represented a real threat to the "doctrine" of the "church" in the view of the more hard-line pastors, particulary in the Portland area.
The relaxed holiness attitude of the Idaho contigent only added more fuel to the fire.
I was not raised UPC. I was very energetic, but also naive. I preached hard and with conviction. You only need to ask my classmates. I was not hard enough on the doctrine (I leaned PCI) and my "end-time" doctrine was suspect. My DS, when siding with my pastor and calling me a liar told me I was "a nice guy". He didn't have the courtesy or courage to tell me that it was political, and for many years I took it personally.
I'm past that now.
I'm looking forward to reading Fudge's book.
Linear Mode
