Book Reviews

Ernest C. Reisinger - A Biography

By Geoffrey Thomas
A Review by Sam Hughey

If you are familiar with the Founders Ministries, you have probably heard of Ernest Reisinger. But did you know that Ernest Reisinger is more synonymous with Founders Ministries than many people realize? Founders Ministries is a ministry of teaching and encouragement that seeks to promote both doctrine and devotion expressed in the Doctrines of Grace and their experiential application to the local church, particularly in the areas of worship and witness. Founders Ministries takes as its theological framework the first recognized confession of faith that Southern Baptists produced, "The Abstract of Principles", and encourages the return to and promulgation of the biblical gospel that our Southern Baptist forefathers held dear. Thus began the theological discoveries of grace for Ernest Reisinger.

Geoffrey Thomas and Banner of Truth were given the prestigious task of writing a biography about Ernest Reisinger and his relationship to Founders Ministries. This book traces the history of Ernest Reisinger back to a Peter Reisinger, a native of Germany, who served as a private in the York County Militia during the Revolutionary War. There was Isaac Reisinger, a tax collector in Carlisle, Lewis Reisinger, from Liverpool, Pennsylvania who served as a private in the Civil War in the 173^rd Regiment of Pennsylvania and a number of Reisingers served with the American troops during the First World War.

Ernest comes from a humble background in the backwoods of Perry County, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Since it was one of the poorest areas in the state, Ernie's (as he's best known) schooling took place in a one-room schoolhouse with a single teacher in charge of a classroom of children ranging in age from five to thirteen. After Ernie's father became a broken man in mind and body due to the Stock Market crash on Monday, October 21, 1929, Ernie's future became as bleak as the family's welfare. Ernie and his brother, John, were placed in an orphanage. They left high school at fourteen and attended Second Presbyterian Church Sunday School. When the boys left Sunday School, they returned to the orphanage. Ernie learned to recite the books of the Bible and the Ten Commandments and knew that he lacked the ability to keep those laws in a manner that pleased God. As Ernie grew into his teen years, he became another twentieth-century pagan. He had no knowledge of himself, the purpose of life or God's plan of salvation.

One day, while Ernie was turning pages in a Bible, he wondered about how one is saved and while searching the Bible for answers, a little piece of paper tucked between two pages was discovered. It was a tract titled, "What Must I Do to Be Saved?". God had called to Ernie and opened his heart to receive the gospel.

After serving in World War II, Ernie returned to Carlisle and began working in the Biddle Mission, overseen by the Second Presbyterian Church where he formerly attended as a young boy. Ernie was soon commissioned by the Carlisle Presbytery as a "lay preacher." It was obvious his doctrinal views were still maturing since he responded to a question about preaching against infant baptism, "I will never preach against any issue on which my own convictions are unclear." By 1950, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Ernie to continue to preach and teach freely at Biddle. He was to use solely the denominational literature of the PCUSA and ask none other than Presbyterian speakers exclusively to minister there. Ernie desired to practice biblical Christianity and apply New Testament church life in worship and witness, but these aims were hindered by the leadership of Second Presbyterian Church. Eventually, Ernie decided to leave the Mission and the many believers he had built up in the Lord.

While studying at Lancaster Bible College, John Reisinger came to believe that God takes the initiative in man's salvation and that He chooses a vast number of sinners to become His people. Soon John believed in God's unconditional election, the depravity of man's nature, and that all whom the Father had given to the Son would persevere to the very end, kept by the power of God. John shared his new-found beliefs with Ernie and gave Ernie his first copy of a book published by the Banner of Truth Trust, The Rich Man and Lazarus. However, Ernie did not receive John's Calvinism with excitement because he was concerned that Calvinism would kill evangelism (Ernie was above all else a soul-winner). Ernie was a voracious reader and consumed volumes of Arminian literature. This literature, along with many of the fundamentalist preachers from Philadelphia who visited Carlisle, was not sympathetic to the rediscovery of historic Christianity. Yet, Ernie laid hold of these truths and became their champion. Why? Because Ernie believed in the complete authority and absolute perfection of Scripture - and if the Scriptures plainly said something, that settled it for him. Ernie says, "I came to Calvinism kicking, fighting, and screaming. There is yet more mercy in God than there was rebellion and ignorance in me. Grace proved to be irresistible. Why: Because grace subdued my power to resist."

However, Ernie had another foe to defeat. He had spent the first ten years of his life immersed in dispensationalism. He wore out three Scofield Bibles and the fourth was falling apart. He heard Lewis Sperry Chafer in person and the only systematic theology he had studied was Dr. Chafer's eight-volume set, which was hot off the press in 1947. After Ernie began investigating his dispensational beliefs more closely, he soon discovered many weaknesses. In large part, the dispensationalist view of the law and salvation led Ernie to contribute to the contemporary church his plea that evangelical Christians rediscover the (proper) place of the law.

Another area of great concern for Ernie was the so-called "carnal Christian" term. He says it is the mother of many second-work-of-grace errors that uniformly depreciate biblical conversion by implying that the change in the converted sinner may amount to little or nothing. Ernie's journey to these convictions was longer than the one he took to embrace the Reformed faith. To Ernie, the law of God gave him the knowledge of his sin (Romans 7) and the gospel gave him a knowledge of the way of salvation (Romans 8). Ernie states, "Man needs both."

Ernie and his wife, Mima, settled in North Pampano, FL following a request to pastor a Baptist church there. Ernie had earlier read R.T. Kendall's "The Rise and Demise of Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention." The knowledge of the convention's roots was to have an impact on the future course of his life and on the denomination itself. The church Ernie pastured (North Pampano Baptist Church) was teetering on the brink of disaster. Ten people were carrying the financial load of the church. The electricity was almost cut off because the bills were not paid, the financial secretary had been embezzling money from the church, and the spiritual health of the congregation was far from good.

North Pampano Baptist Church recovered as a direct result of Ernie's staunch business attitude and a strong desire to see a dying church renewed. Ernie brought reformation to North Pampano Baptist Church. Ernie states,

"Since nothing in this mortal life is more important than true religion in the soul and in the church, reformation should be diligently sought after, and carefully looked into. It is not enough to pout and complain about what is wrong with the visible church, but we must be preoccupied in reforming and restoring what is right and biblical. A censorious spirit will not reform the church."

The congregation soon began to give their money to distribute a book with the forbidden title, Abstract of a Systematic Theology, to seminary students. They believed that if this book could help produce a preacher like the one filling their pulpit then they wanted every Southern Baptist seminarian to read it. Ernie began to distribute volumes of James P. Boyce's work to Southern Baptist seminarians.

The personal contacts Ernie made from distributing Boyce's Abstract of Systematic Theology could be numbered in the hundreds. The end of the 1970s and the entire decade of the 80s was a fertile period for the spread of the free-grace teaching in the U.S.A. The writings of J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, James Montgomery Boice and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the preaching of Al Martin, the growing influence of John MacArthur, and the teaching of conservative Presbyterian seminaries were all encouraging the revival of experiential Calvinism. Ernie and his friend, Fred Malone, received hundreds of calls from young Southern Baptist pastors seeking help in applying the truths of God's sovereignty to their ministries.

Ernie began to gather from his correspondence the names of Southern Baptist pastors who were sympathetic to the doctrines of grace. By July 1982, he had an informal network of over 500 preachers with whom he was making contact by mail or phone. The mutual interest in the theology of such Southern Baptist fathers as Boyce, John A. Broadus, and John L. Dagg was often discussed. Ernie and another of his friends, Tom Nettles, had for years discussed the possibility of holding a conference for like-minded supporters of the doctrines of grace who were experiencing a reformation in their churches. They finally settled on the idea of a conference with the doctrines of grace at its heart. It would be known as the Southern Baptist Founders Conference. Its purpose would be to promote historic Christianity, especially in the experiential application of its truths to local church worship and witness. A variety of speakers would be invited to present formal papers, sermons, expositions, and devotions; literature would be promoted and sold, friendships and fellowship encouraged. For ten years, Ernie Reisinger chaired the Founders Conference planning committee.

Ernest C. Reisinger has authored several books, defended the (proper) use of the Confessions of faith, Catechisms, and Creeds, and vigorously strengthened a resurgence of true Biblical Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention.

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