Standing for truth!

It is quite interesting to note, even though few note it, that when truth is really promoted, whether in church or in society, it always provokes a reaction from the ungodly world. Take the preaching ministry, for example. When the Gospel is truly and relevantly preached, it stirs the ire of the ungodly. Indeed, it tackles the 'sacred cows' within that congregation or community. When 'sacred cows' are attacked by faithful preachers, they will know about it.

When a similar stand for truth and righteousness is taken in wider society, then we can but expect the self-same reaction. Truth always hurts! It irritates! It antagonises! If it doesn't, then one must ask if it is truth that is being promoted, or is it mere personal preferences that are being set forward, and not the revolutionary Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Martin Luther famously said that if a man preaches on every subject in the Bible, and refuses to deal with the openly defiant issues of the day, then he can hardly be said to be preaching the Gospel.

If Luther is correct, then much of what passes for Gospel preaching is nothing of the sort. The truth always hits home, even when it is preached or witnessed to in a manner that is less than perfect. It always provokes a reaction from the world; it never fails to stir Satan, the accuser of the brethren.

It is said of John Wesley that when he preached, there was either a revival or a riot! Sad that today, even amongst Wesley's adherents, there is little evidence of his spirit in those who love his name!

We must ask if it is possible for the Gospel to be preached when unbelievers love the preacher! When the world within the church says that the minister is very nice, then he most probably is not proclaiming Christ in all His fulness. If unbelievers can sit comfortably under his ministry, being "at ease in Zion," as Amos said, then something is tragically wrong.

Also, in society, when truth is treasured and precious, and this truth is promoted, then Satan is aroused and bears his evil teeth at those who stand for it.

What is important to know is that when the same truth is promoted, whether in the church or outside of it, the same Satan is provoked, and sets out to take action against those who are men and women of truth.

Christians must ask themselves if they are, in fact, living the truth, or are they just playing at being Christians? Do they know what true truth is (Schaeffer's phrase)? Are their lives based on true truth, or are they 'fly by nights' who have made a 'decision' about something religious, even evangelical, but are not quite sure what it was they decided?

Christians who have lost their saltiness are fit for nothing but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. Beware the judgement of God!

The Sentence of Death

Paul speaks about "the sentence of death" having been passed on him, and his fellow preachers. This was a reality with which he lived on a daily basis, and experienced several attempts to make this reality materialise.

When this happens to the modern day Christian, it is amazing how the amazing grace of God comes to his aid. To know the real presence of the Spirit of God in his heart, is an all too rare felt experience, but at times of extreme challenge, this becomes a reality. To be filled with a conscious sense of the peace of God, amidst hostile external circumstances, is proof of the nearness of God to His people at all times. To have his mind filled with the comforting words of Scripture, puts iron into his faith, and enables him to stand resolute and firm whatever the circumstances.

Then in the midst of disturbing circumstances, to have Ps.46 as the daily reading, with God saying to him through His word that "[He ]was/is their refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble," well, that crowns it, does it not? Even though the entire physical world goes into convulsions, yet God is still the same, and can comfort His people. To "be still and know that [He] is God," is a tonic that cures all spiritual doubts.

"How good is the God we adore! Our faithful, unchangeable Friend. His love is as great as His power, and knows neither measure nor end." That's our God! How truly wonderful He is! He's our Father, in Christ. He loves us with an everlasting love. He is still the Father Who cares.

Why Reformation Tarries!

This is my 83rd posting on this blog, and as a result certain themes have appeared. The one over-arching theme to rise to the top is the critical need for another reformation within the church of Jesus Christ. The identification of this issue will be well received by those who look on the unreformed churches as less than they ought to be, and will give this a warm welcome.

But within the reformed churches, there might appear a very different response. As Reformed churches, they have made it! They are OK, and do not need reformation, and woe betide anyone who even suggests that the reformed churches, especially the purest forms of reformed ecclesiology, need to get back to the Scriptures, and reform their church life and practice according to the supreme rule of faith and worship.

However, the fact remains that all the reformed churches need to take a long and hard look at where they are, how they got there, and how they can return to the biblical position.

Hence, my decision to carry out a piece of research into this very issue. The following matters inter alia need to be addressed, for a start to be made in getting answers to the God-defying situation in many reformed churches today.

When this research has been written up, nothing you have written will be attributed to you - the default position - unless you have given specific instructions about this matter.

1. Name the top five reasons why the church of Jesus Christ needs to be reformed according to the Scriptures. Given reasons for your response.

2. Name the top five reasons why you think the church has got into its present position/condition. Give reasons...

3. What are the top five things/actions that need to be taken in order to initiate reform within the churches. Give reasons....

4. Who must take these actions? Give reasons...

5. Any other points you might want to make will be most welcome.

Please share this website with your sympathetic contacts, and ask for their participation in this research project.

Your assistance will be much appreciated.

Evangelical Romanism and Baptism

The Christian church observes the two sacraments as set out in the Scriptures - Covenant Baptism and the Lord's Supper. These precious means of grace bring encouragement to God's people concerning His sovereign saving grace. The biblical sacrament of Covenant Baptism is especially precious, not only to Christian believers, but also to their children, who are also members of the covenant of grace, and who ought therefore to receive the sign and seal of that covenant.

Over the rolling centuries, these sacraments have been prostituted by the church, her officials and her members, turning them into saving ordinances. In other words, if a child is to be saved, it must, of necessity, be baptised, or christened as they prefer to put it. The child will only start to thrive after it has been 'done,' and baptism will keep it safe from harm and danger; indeed, only after it has been 'done' can it be called its name, for christening is essentially a naming ceremony carried out in a religious context by some kind of official religious priest.

The unreformed churches have a novel way of observing or administrating this sacrament. Because they see the church as being essential to salvation, the child is handed over to the officiating priest, who then 'does the business.' This unreformed practice evokes compliments towards the officiating priest, and gasps of 'awwwwwe' towards the young infant. It is a 'nice' ceremony, and one that courts popularity.

This obnoxious practice has also become part and parcel to the professing reformed churches, especially where liberal ministers minister. One liberal and ecumenical minister known to me used to take the child in his arms to perform the sacrament, then go for a walk up and down the aisles of the meetinghouse, displaying the little infant, to the obvious delight of those present.

Now one can understand such a minister carrying on like this, but one finds it even more baffling when a reformed evangelical minister carries on in this manner. I have witnessed this at church, when the priestly practice of the minister taking the child to be baptised from the father's arms, baptising the infant, then returning it to the father. The symbolism of this is the centrality of the church in the child's salvation, the priestly nature of this sacrament, the robbing the father of the privilege of presenting his child for covenant baptism, all in all making a theological switch away from the reformed and biblical understanding of this sacrament to a clearly Roman Catholic one.

The reformers would be horrified if they were here to see such a travesty of the sacrament. The Huguenot ministers did not take the children of believers in their arms, and in fact, did not touch them, because they believed that the rightness of 'sprinkling' of infants was a correct way of administering this sacrament. In addition, they did not want to give even the slightest impression or hint of priestly activity on his part.

But in today's decadent church, ministers wish to practice as unreformed priests, and this practice is becoming accepted and is increasingly prevalent in the evangelical and reformed churches.

Ministers who do this kind of thing must answer the following questions:
1. Where is the biblical mandate for this unreformed practice?
2. Who authorised this unreformed practice?
3. What is the theological significance of this unreformed practice?
4. What message is being conveyed to unthinking congregations and elders when such
an unreformed practice is being used?
5. How can this unreformed practice be justified from the practices of the true
reformed churches down through the centuries?
6. If this unreformed practice is allowed to go on, what will be the next
development of this sacrament?

These questions, amongst others, must not only be asked, but answered by those who not only use this unreformed practice, but support those who do. And the really subtle danger of this is that the church is being taken straight down the ecumenical road BY EVANGELICAL MINISTERS! Evangelical ministers are the vehicles that the church of Antichrist is using to do his nefarious work.

Oh, it is time for evangelicals to awake; they must shake themselves, and become wide-eyed and not miss what is going on under their noses. How will these men answer before Almighty God for the Romanisation of their churches? Ignorance of the law is no appeal in any court, nor is ignorance of what God requires of His church's ordained servants.

Evangelicalism is a convenient cloak under which this may be done. Yes, Eve was deceived by the serpent, but Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. Elders, if you permit this unreformed practice to continue, you are sinning with your eyes wide open. What will be your answer on that dread day? You cannot say you did not know, because it is your responsibility as elders to become conversant with what your Lord wants for His church.

But evangelicals doing the work of the ecumenicals in Romanising the Protestant churches is perhaps the Satan's most crafty and efficient move. Who will suspect a good evangelical minister of Romanising the church? The church establishment will be delighted at an evangelical doing this work, because that will keep the reformers within the churches - if there are any left - at bay.

But the very thought of this happening, the very thought of Christian people being taken for a ride, being deceived by the clever use of language, is most disturbing. Oh church of Christ, AWAKE!

Proposed Papal Visit to the UK

News has broken that the Pope is planning to visit the UK on the invitation of Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The visit it also expected to include Northern Ireland.

Gordon Brown was brought up in a Presbyterian Manse in Scotland, where officially at least, he would have known what his church taught about Antichrist's representative on earth, the Pope. He would have known what his Huguenot ancestors suffered at the hands of the Roman Catholic 'church' in the 17th and 18th centuries. He ought also to have known that what his church teaches and what the RC church teaches is very different, and indeed is directly contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures.

The invitation that Brown extended to the Pope will serve only to reinforce false doctrine, and keep millions of poor needy sinners away from the true Gospel as taught by reformers like John Calvin and his Huguenot sons Moise Amyraut, Jean Daille, and Richard Baxter, and in spiritual darkness.

He will know that the Roman Catholic religion is believed to have been the motivation for the vicious IRA campaign of terrorism, mainly in Northern Ireland, and also in GB, with devastating effects.

The very presence of the Roman Catholic church and its false religion is evidence of the failure of the Reformation, and is also a call for evangelistic effort to convert the millions of adherents of that religion. It is also evidence of the decadence of the Protestant churches which have lost sight of the transforming truths of the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholicism is also a call to reformed evangelicals to busy themselves in trying to win these poor deluded sinners to Christ.

Had Mr Brown learned his church and secular history, he would not have invited the head of error to visit our country. By doing this, he is endangering our democracy, and fostering a spirit of deepening falsehood among our peoples. If the church stood in need of reform in 1517, how much more does it need it today, with Rome's additional detestable errors that it has added to its religious inventory.

Our nation does not need to be further weakened by such a visit. Our spiritual needs are enormous, but few seem to care. Morally, we are approaching melt-down, but few see it. The challenge of Islam, with its proposal to take over every democratic country in the world, falls into this same category.

We neither want nor do we need a visit from the Pope; but what we do need most urgently is for God to raise up a man who will herald forth His saving Gospel with mighty Holy Spirit power. We need another Cranmer, another Ridley, another Baxter, another Ryle, men who know God and who proclaim His saving Word.

Of course, such men are despised by the world, and by large tracts of the visible church. But a man despised by the world and the worldly churches is precisely what this country needs at present.

May God's people plead with the Sovereign God to raise up such a man. No need is greater, and none more urgent.

Re-Writing History

The re-writing of history is the chosen past-time of the idle. We see it in the revisionism of the pure teaching of Calvin regarding God's way of reconciliation; in the refusal of reformed and Calvinistic ministers to wear their Geneva preaching gowns; and in the insistence of some churches on the necessity of Episcopalianisn as God's way of governing His church.

We also see it in NI where men are prepared "to call good evil, and evil good," and where the indescribable barbarity of the various terrorist organisations is now being airbrushed out of existence, with a view to presenting both convicted and unconvicted terrorists in a much better light. Engaging in this past-time are very senior churchmen and the religious class, as well as the political class in Northern Ireland.

This "chosen past-time of the idle" has already created unnecessary disruption within the Reformed churches. Those churches that profess to follow Calvin depart from his teaching on the sacraments, e.g, our Baptist brethren, on church government, e.g, our independents and the episcopalians, on Calvin's understanding of the atonement, or reconciliation, the hyper-calvinists and high orthodox denying Calvin's universal emphasis, e.g, the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. If Roman Catholicism had been a Christian church, it would have been included in the later category.

On the matter of ministerial dress, there has also been an almost universal departure from Calvin's practice, and that of his worthy Huguenot sons. The ministers most likely to follow this practice are the liberals and ecumenicals within the professing reformed churches, the very people who ought not to desecrate this noble and respected reformed symbolism.

The wearing of Geneva gowns by reformed preachers was a clear theological statement, that they were 'reformed' men, and not Romanists. This distinction is not proper in today's decadent and 'politically correct' churches who worship and bow down at the shrine of modernity. They were used to cover the man, so that only the pure Word of God was heard. It disallowed the parading of man's self-importance, and prevented every semblance of fashion displays by preachers. It was also a mark of the preacher's educational achievement, though academic hoods were not worn by Calvin and his Huguenot sons. These simple and plain gowns also gave the impression of authority in the preacher, though, of course, these, of themselves, cannot convey authority; only the Word of God taken by the Spirit of God can give the Word of God divine authority.

Whilst it is unacceptable that men who do not embrace the teaching of Calvin should wear these gowns, it is equally unacceptable that those who follow Calvin because he follows Scripture, do not. There has been a loss of historical perspective on the part of many reformed ministers, and their refusal to wear the insignia of Calvin's orthodoxy, are doing themselves, their congregations, and their denominations, and generations yet unborn, a great disservice. They are trying to re-write reformed history!

When men lose the preciousness of God's dealings with them in the past, they are destined to cheapening His dealings with them in the present and in the future!

"There was no man!"

I am a bit surprised when ministers say that getting ministerial colleagues to stay closer to the WCF was the way to reform the church.

My view was, and still is, that the church has to be reformed according to the Scriptures, the church's supreme standard, NOT any manmade document, no matter how good it might be. The 'rule of faith' requires this, does it not?

Ministers and elders are to submit conscience to no other authority than the Word of God, revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

I think you will agree with me when I say that the reason the church is in such a decadent condition is because she has departed from the truth, the Scriptures, the Word of God. There is no way that any Christian and Reformed church body can substitute anything for the supreme place the Scriptures ought to have, for anything else!

It is my conviction that our country, and indeed the whole world, is as they are today because of the state of the church. Society reflects accurately the spiritual condition of the church.

Yet there is no one to "stand in the gap," no one to bring the living Word of the living God to a faithless church and a perishing nation. Where are the true prophets of God who bring His message to the decadent church and nation? Is there no one who sees what is happening, or are there too many 'time servers' - as a former colleague of ours from the ... Presbytery described them? We are getting too many sermons, but precious few messages from God!

How often do we celebrate great men like Calvin and his true sons and successors, Baxter, the Wesley's, Whitefield, Edwards, Brainard, Chalmers, Ryle, yet we all tend to run a mile from doing what they did! We praise them for their sacrifice in the cause of God, but we will be sure to protect ourselves when it comes to standing for God and His truth.

What does it say about a church that encourages men, and women, who are liberals, ecumenists, modernisers, Arminians, and Gospel haters, to subscribe the WCF at the various milestones, yet it hounds out true evangelical reformed ministers, and no one cares a toss! As someone once famously said, "You cannot criticise what you are prepared to tolerate."

If we can stir one another up to greater faithfulness to the Lord and His Gospel, then there is hope for the reformation of His church. But if we insist on being "firm's men" to the core, then we care nothing for the well-being of Christ's body on earth, and she will never be reformed according to the Word of God, or transformed into the likeness of Christ.