Ernest Reisinger

Ernest Reisinger (1919 - 2004), a Reformed Baptist pastor, he helped lay the foundation for what became the Founders Ministries, which seeks to return Southern Baptists to their Reformed beginnings. He began the Founders Journal in 1990 and remained it's Associate Editor until his death.

He came to faith in Christ in his mid-twenties, later made a public profession of his faith at a Salvation Army meeting, and was subsequently baptized in 1943 at a Southern Baptist Church in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Although a Baptist, Reisinger had a close association with paedo-baptists, having attended a Presbyterian Sunday School and becoming a "registered member" of a paedo-baptist church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania before he was baptized. Later, in 1946, Reisinger was even commissioned by the Carlisle Presbytery as a "lay preacher".^[1]^

Despite his early affiliation with Presbyterianism, in the 1950s he helped establish the Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As time passed, the Carlisle church decided that Reisinger should be ordained. In 1971, "the charge to the church" at the ordination service was brought by the popular Dr. Cornelius Van Til of the Westminster Seminary.

After his ordination Reisinger served as pastor to churches in Islamorada and North Pompano in Florida. These were Southern Baptist churches, and, by the 1980's he was playing a leading role in working for the recovery of the doctrines of grace in that denomination. He demonstrated that this was a recovery, not an introduction, by directing the reprinting of James Boyce's Abstract of Theology. To the last he remained the Associate Editor of The Founders Journal: Committed to Historic Southern Baptist Principles.

Notes

  1. ? From a review of Geoffrey Thomas' biography by Bob L. Ross

Resources

  • Geoffrey Thomas, Ernest Reisinger: A Biography (Banner of Truth, 2003)

External links