Dear Brother Hillary,
Here is an article that has had a significant influence on my thinking in the area of covenant children. Maybe you will find it profitable as well.
http://www.faithtacoma.org/doctrine/covenant.aspx
I’ve also read Lewis Bevins Schenk’s book, The Presbyterian Doctrine of children in the covenant, which has had a profound impact on me.
I only mention these in order to let you know what has shaped my thinking on the post on “Parents & Children — Cause and Effect.”
In order to support the overall contention of Flavel I would appeal to Ex. 20 when it clearly states that
I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Both God’s condemnation and his salvation tend to run generationally … and yet not without exception. Praise God!
Now certainly Acts reminds us that this covenantal arrangement en-grafts those who had been strangers and aliens to the covenant when it teaches, “And the promise is for you and for your children, AND AS MANY AS ARE AFAR OFF THAT THE LORD OUR GOD SHALL CALL.” Praise God that in this age of grace many, like myself, who were afar off, the Lord our God called, calls and continues to call.
Also the NT teaches that the nations will come in and swell the Church. However, I honestly believe that the norm was to be that they would come in by nations and not so much that we would pick off people one by one in a kind of individualistic approach to Evangelism that is current today.
However, having gladly rejoiced in the certainty that God will save the nations, I wonder how long that will happen in our lifetimes as the church continues to lose her covenant seed at the rapid rate that is happening? Will God save the nations as He loses His own covenant seed? How long can faithful evangelism so that the Nations might be saved happen if the Church continues to redefine the Gospel in order to accommodate those unfaithful covenant families in their midst with a message of “peace peace, when judgment and discipline is swirling around us?”
I guess I find my optimistic theology in the hope that those few that God snatches will be obedient and be ones who will be fruitful and multiply to the point that greater are their numbers than the numbers of those, and their seed, who will make a covenant with death by turning aside from Christ. My hope lies in the reality that those who God does snatch will become a people who will raise up large families in the way of God’s covenant promises. My hope also lies in the realization that no pagan people can prosper long and avoid destruction who try to build personal lives and culture apart from Christ and the real reality that only Christianity reflects. After all, Babel still speaks. Babel will continue to fall with the result that Christianity will always flourish again.
Given your admonition I will write something soon that supports evangelism and great expectations of God’s harvesting those fields that remain white unto harvest. I do believe that God can send and has sent seasons of Reformation and Awakening, but, I think this must be a “both and” matter. We must have our families and Churches thinking covenantally again and we must continue to say to those outside the covenant, “Be ye Reconciled to God.” It strikes me if we fail at one we will fail at both. I don’t need to tell you that our families in our Churches are very spiritually sick. Is it possible to proclaim a covenantal gospel when there are so few covenantally minded Churches that remain so that we can fold those who come to Christ into a place where they will receive covenantal nurture?
With God all things are possible.
I’m sorry if I communicated despair. That wasn’t my intention, although I must admit there are times I wonder if we should be like Jeremiah and just proclaim the judgment that is upon the visible church in the West and is coming upon the visible church in the West with the reminder that once we pass through judgment (and discipline for the invisible Church) there will be times of refreshing ahead. The Church in the West seems so utterly past reclamation and the culture is in a state of trauma because of it. Yet I know that the Omnipotnent Lord Christ is greater than my sinful, and often repented of, despondency. Forgive me brother when by despondency shows more than my repentance. I do believe the Church’s best times are yet ahead of it! Just maybe not in my lifetime.
I know, that there have been periods in history where the Church was supernaturally shaken from her spiritual lethargy to be about obeying both the great commission and the cultural mandate. In light of that I pray daily that God will, in Wrath, remember mercy. I so love the Church in the West. Though never all that she might have been she has been mighty in the things of God over the centuries. My heart breaks at her loss of her first love.
Thank you for your admonition and your reminder that God has every intent of building up the fallen tent of David by bringing in the Nations so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
My love to you and your lovely bride,
Bret
