Tales From The Temple by James T. Spurgeon PAGE 2

these type churches, people who wrote to me and told me how much they had been helped by what I was doing. I was naive, at first, about how many people the Tales would possibly reach. I imagined that I was entertaining a couple of dozen people who had come down similar roads to mine. But it wasn't long before I realized that hundreds of people were reading them regularly and dozens, perhaps hundreds had been helped. More, my Tales were finding their way into the hands of prominent members of the IFB movement.

Let me say right now that I love independent fundamental Baptists. Many of them are the most sincere, God-fearing people you will ever meet. They love the Lord. But within the movement there has been for quite some time now some sinister activity and practice among the leadership. Many would point out that these right-wing nuts that I'm talking about are not the leaders of the movement, just the loudest and most vocal. But I must point out that for some reason they are tolerated and that is a shame. And whatever the reason for this toleration among the more noble IFB preachers and leaders, it is this small vocal bunch that has given the movement a bad name. Some of the IFBs with their heads screwed on straight should stand up and say enough is enough and hold these men accountable. Perhaps this book will help bring that about.

The audience these Tales were originally written for already had a knowledge of many things IFB that those outside the movement may be unfamiliar with. For that reason I have included a glossary of people, places, and terms at the end to help the uninitiated along. The characters, who are many, I have painted exactly as they appeared to me during my time in this movement. The emotions expressed, for the most part, are the emotions I was feeling at the time and do not necessarily reflect the more mature opinions and emotions I have now - ten years or more later. What I present is simply what I saw and felt and thought at the time.

At the tender age of 18 years old, having just graduated from Christian high school in west Tennessee, my whole family picked up and moved to an east Texas town called Longview. We moved there so that we could be a part of what we believed to be the greatest soul winning church in the world and so that my dad and I might enroll in the greatest fundamentalist Bible college in the world. The church is the Longview Baptist Temple and the college is known as Texas Baptist College. The pastor-king of this institution is Robert Glenn Gray I.

It was the summer of 1987 when we moved and I was as naive as any 18 year-old could be, but I was about to get an education. Having given you this small bit of information as an introduction I now present to you, with minor changes, the infamous Tales From the Temple. Enjoy and God bless.

1 - Are You a Communist?

Have you ever had the barrel of a .357 magnum pointed up your nose?

James Cauthron was the groundskeeper at the Longview Baptist Temple. A very quiet man with a sense of humor, he was one of the more likeable men on the pastoral staff. He had a good reading voice and his job in the church service was to read the text before the sermon.

Bro. Cauthron was pastoral staff with an asterisk by his name. You see, every time Gray talked about divorce from the pulpit, Bro. Cauthron became an illustration of how a divorced man could never be senior pastor of a church. James Cauthron's first wife had left him and he had remarried.

But Bro. Cauthron was content being, as he said, "a doorkeeper in the house of my God". He could often be heard whistling in the hallways while replacing a light bulb or something. He always had a kind word and a smile. Pleasant, that's how I would have described him.

Except for one thing.

Bro. Cauthron was a classic "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." This kind, gentle, good-