In the 8/12/16 edition of the Sword Of The Lord, the publication's editor Shelton Smith composed an article titled “The Fellowship Thing: A Clearly Defined New Testament Concept”.

In the column, the minister concluded that, even if someone professes to be a born again believer, you really ought not have much to do with the individual unless they pretty much march lockstep with you in agreement on a comprehensive litany of secondary matters.

One wonders how Smith feels regarding other denominations as leery of those wild-eyed Fundamentalists.

As evidence of his hardline position, Shelton Smith referenced a ministerial association he had been pressured into attending as a young pastor and seminary student.

To justify the fact that he never went back, Smith mentions seeing so-called ministers of the Gospel caught smoking cigars and hearing others engaged in “off color conversations”.

Some might have even remarked how good a lady might have looked in tight-fitting jeans and a short haircut (ha ha).

As shocking as that might have been, can he really insist that what he might have been exposed to at such a meeting in the 1970's was really worse than what he was in the vicinity of during the NASCAR races and baseball games he is on the record of having attended in the pages of the Sword of the Lord, a publication that at one time published an article explicitly stating viewers of Stat Trek were not fit to teach school?

By Frederick Meekins