HERITAGE
"We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us,
what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old." Psalm 44:1
An eye on the future, a foot in the past, but a heart for the present
What is needed today in the training of preachers is what has always been needed – as J. Frank Norris said some 75 years ago in relation to why the school in Fort Worth (ultimately known as the Bible Baptist Seminary) was started in 1939:
“What is needed is a school that teaches the whole English Bible. What is needed is a school that will take men from the engine cab, from between the plowshares and teach them the Bible. What is needed is a school that is free from modernism. What is needed is a school that will teach a man how to go out with a Bible under his arms, faith in his heart, and in the power of the Holy Spirit begin in a vacant lot and build a church to the glory of God.”
A man may still be readily taken from the road or rail, as well the field (truck, train or tractor), by a school to prepare for the ministry, if it is the right kind of a school. Drivers, engineers, and farmers (i.e., professionals from many fields) are ready-made potential students for ministerial training. The idea is that they leave a profession already begun in order to follow the Lord (like Peter, James, John, Andrew, and Matthew of old), having learned much from their vocation which can be refined for use in the ministry by a thoroughgoing Biblical course of study.
Likewise, during the early post-war years of the late 1940s, men discharged from the military entered the BBS. They did so to fulfill a commitment to God that was cultivated by what they had seen and experienced while involved in the greatest conflict of modern times for the future of civilization. Soldiers who have sensed a call to the ministry today can find the same kind of place in a school like the NBBS wherein not only men right out of high school but also many in their late 20s, as well as their 30s, 40s, and 50s make up the student body. An institution in which the classes are not only still free from modernism as the old BBS, but also that which inevitably follows it – postmodernism, which now permeates our society (which in essence is the idea that truth is relative, that there is no one truth for everyone).
The Fundamental Bible Baptist Institute was begun by Dr. Louis Entzminger in 1939 with the blessing of Dr. J. Frank Norris
In 1945 the school was changed to the Bible Baptist Seminary, and its ranks were filled
with World War II Veterans returning from the war and who sensed the call to preach.
Dr. Norris looks on as Dr. Entzminger conducts a class at the Seminary.
J. Frank Norris and Louis Entzminger together conceived of, and carried on, a philosophy of training
preachers that produced results of such a magnitude that is even being felt today. Many schools still yet
incorporate some of the features by which the Bible Baptist Seminary was characterized.
Start of the NBBS
In 1984, a group of several hundred pastors met together (under the leadership of Dr. Raymond W. Barber and the
directorship of Dr. Terry Riggsby as the Administrator) to found a school that was wholly in keeping with the old Seminary. Consequently, it was named the Norris Bible Baptist Institute. It later became the Norris Bible Baptist Seminary. Since
1984, numerous graduates have started churches, assumed pastorates, and gone to the mission field in keeping with
the commission of Christ to His churches. Many of these alumni are also now faculty members at NBBS.
