Sermon 02 February 2025 — Deceiving Spirits, Doctrine of Demons, And Hypocritical Liars

As we come to I Tim. 4 Paul segues from talking about the glorious Church and its message at the tail end of Chapter 3 to writing about the fact that this glorious church of the living God which is the pillar and ground of truth is still beset with problems in its midst. This reminds us that while the Church is magnificent there remain in even the very best of church tares among the wheat. Here in I Tim. 4 St. Paul moves to some of those tare problems that Timothy is going to have to deal with.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, 3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is [l]sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

Here we find a compact unit and as a brief overview we note that we see an indication that apostasy is coming — an apostasy driven by deceiving spirits spreading the doctrine of demons. These deceiving spirits use hypocritical lying false teachers whose consciences have been seared to mediate the doctrine of demons. These doctrine of demons are what will come to be known as Gnosticism which in the 1st century required abstention from marriage and certain foods. All of this is in contradiction to the fact that God created everything to be received with thanksgiving. St. Paul under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration teaches the truth of God’s good creation — the purpose which is to provide for people’s needs.

In this passage the Holy Spirit reminds us that not all who belong to the Church outwardly belong to the church inwardly. Not all that glitters is gold. There are those who will apostatize. Of these types the Holy Spirit teaches in I John

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

The fact that some depart from the faith does not mean that some were once in Christ and then decided to no longer be in Christ. It means that some covenantally identified with the Church — God’s people — and now because they never were in Christ have ceased being covenantally identified with God’s people. They have apostatized.

Now, St. Paul knew that this was coming because the Spirit had explicitly stated it. A mere 1/2 dozen years ago  this same Paul addressing the Elders of the Church in Ephesus were Timothy is Pastoring said,

“I know that after my departure ravenous wolves will enter among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

A few years after that warning Paul can write in Col. 2 as from a Roman prison warning the congregations who were to receive that circular letter against the error that faith in Christ’s atoning work had to be supplemented by the same type of ascetic beliefs and practices that he will speak of as going on here in Ephesus.

Now these were problems that existed in the latter times they were living in but they are not problems that are necessarily unique to those specific latter times. We deal with these same types of things today as we will see in a few minutes.

From writing to them of what the Spirit has explicitly said about apostasy the Apostle turns to the cause of this coming Apostasy.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons… I Tim. 4:1

The Scripture hear reminds us how important it is for each of us to pray earnestly that we would given discernment in who and what we listen to. It is altogether too easy to give heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons as mediated to us by  hypocritical liars.

Today we hear frequently about the dangers of misinformation and disinformation and that often from people who would have us believe their own misinformation. The Scripture here underscores the reality that in our information age we live in times festooned with hypocritical liars who are conveying the information of deceiving spirits resulting in a church that is often properly characterized as embracing doctrines of demons.

More often than not these hypocritical liars that Paul speaks of here today are the clergy. In his own time the hypocritical liars were likewise men who thought of themselves as clergy types. These are men who are supposed to be feeding and leading the flock but instead they come in and do great damage. Our churches today are populated by these men today in legions. And so we must have our radar up for them.

However, here St. Paul reminds us that error ultimately stems from deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons. There is something simple here that we can not miss. Ultimately error is put into the life blood of a person and/or people not by bad ideology or by being infected by bad ideas by themselves.

Ultimately, we are taught here, error arises from spiritual realities. Here we are told that it is deceiving spirits and the doctrines of demons that accounts for some departing from the faith.

Now I pause to point this out because the Reformed movement especially tends to see apostatizing and departure through the grid of theological and ideological errors. We tend to be very rational about it all dismissing the reality of the supernatural as existing behind the errors of theology and ideology.

We can fail to understand that while certainly theology and ideology are in play, that ultimately error arises from an active spiritual world that has an interest in stealing our faith. Satan does prowl around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

We see here that deceiving spirits exist and are the ultimate explanation why people embrace loopy and stupid ideology and theology. Dealing with people that are in error is not ultimately about getting them to change their theology and ideology. There has to be a understanding that it is not merely bad thinking that is going on but ultimately people’s bad thinking is accounted for because of the very active work of deceiving spirits communicating the doctrines of demons.

We see something of this in II Cor. 4:4 where we read;

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Reformed folk don’t tend to be especially good at making this connection. We tend to want to make everything about presuppositions, ideas, and worldviews forgetting that we wrestle against spiritualites and powers. It is true that we are in Worldview warfare but behind that Worldview warfare is a very real spiritual world that we are idiots if we don’t take into account.

Another thing we should note here though is that the deceiving spirits are conveying “doctrines of demons.” This brings us back to recognizing how important doctrine is to the Christian faith. Deceiving Spirits work to the end that we would own doctrines of demons. This reminds us how important it is to embrace sound doctrine. There is no Christianity where there is a distaste for sound doctrine because where sound doctrine is despised what will arise is the doctrine of demons. It is only the work of deceiving spirits that find Christians poo pooing the magnificent importance of the doctrines of the Bible and the Christian faith.

What we are suggesting here is that those who denigrate sound doctrine are themselves under the sway of deceiving spirits and have by their denigration of sound doctrine already embraced the doctrine of demons. Doctrines of demons specialize in convincing Christians that sound doctrine is unimportant.

This was clearly seen in something that Rev. Tim Keller said a few years ago. Keller, a huge influence in the Reformed world during his life, said;

“The Gospel of Christianity which is that you are not saved by good doctrine, not by your good works but by sheer unmerited grace. It pulls out the self righteousness and superiority that tends to go along with religious belief. “

Tim Keller

Let us briefly examine this doctrine of demons.

1.) I’m so confused. Isn’t this a doctrine that Tim is giving me … a doctrine that apparently I must be conversant with in order to be saved. Presumably it is even a good doctrine

If I’m not saved via good doctrine must I be saved via bad doctrine or am I saved with no doctrine? (which of course the advocacy of which would be a doctrine).

This diminishing of doctrine is NOT Christianity but is born of deceiving spirits resulting in Tim Keller owning the doctrine of Demons and Tim’s owning the doctrine of demons was seen in many of the doctrines the man held.

2.) Tim’s doctrine in the first sentence is obviously driving his self-righteousness as seen in his second sentence. Tim obviously views himself, because of his superior doctrine, as superior over those poor benighted Christians who believe that good doctrine is related to salvation.

Little flock … take heed to your doctrine. Be in much prayer that the Lord Christ would make you grow in His doctrine. Do not be fooled by deceiving spirits parlaying doctrines of demons through hypocritical liars.

In I Timothy 4 St. Paul is making war specifically on Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the doctrine that suggests that the more one withdraws from the creational world (or ironically the more one excesses in the creational world) the more Holy one is. In this text Paul specifically mentions hypocritical liars who are deceiving people about the goodness of food and marriage. Food and marriage touch two of the most basic human instincts (life and sex). In the 1st century latter times Gnostic teachers were convincing people that the less connected people were with the physical corporeal world the more exemplary and holy they were. St. Paul slices and dices the godless apostates by reminding Timothy that “everything that God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

Now today we still have the Gnostics among us. We still have those who want to suggest that the created world is somehow not to be recognized and/or enjoyed by God’s people. There are those who have imported Gnosticism into the Reformed church by suggesting that some significant creational categories disappear upon redemption. It is nothing but the gasses of Gnosticism that suggest that ethnicity and race are not important for Christians. It is Gnosticism that finds clergy saying things like “race is a social construct” or that “race doesn’t really exist.” We are living with the same Gnostic impulse that Paul viciously rips apart in I Timothy 4. The only difference is that while the 1st century Gnostics were making their appeal in their prohibition of food and marriage our current Gnostics make their appeal to the prohibition of affirming genuine differences between peoples as well as the modern Gnostic prohibition of recognizing the creational distinctions between male and female as seen in their welcoming women to serve as Deacons, Elders, and Pastors in God’s Church. The embrace of New Age fantasies, the embrace of Alienism, the embrace of the barrenness of atheistic philosophies are all the consequence of the fact that the devil and His troops are liars with the devil being the Father of lies.

This might remind us of C. S. Lewis’ excellent work “The Screwtape Letters” where a experienced Demon is giving advice to a Junior demon on how to best deceive humans.

“Like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,

Your affectionate uncle
Screwtape”

If you haven’t read the Screwtape Letters I would encourage you to do so.

Well, in the 1st century church the Gnostics were insisting upon “no marriage, no meat.” In the 21st century Church the Gnostics are screaming, “no race, no gender.” The particulars which the Gnostics are attacking in the Church changes but the Gnosticism remains the same. For St. Paul it was “marriage is not necessary,” and “abstaining from certain foods is required.” For us today it is “race is not real,” and “gender is insignificant.” Then and now I would argue all is born of this continuing Gnosticism which is a doctrine of Demons.

Before pushing on we should note again that in I Timothy 4 St. Paul clearly communicates that twisted understanding of theology as applied to creational categories (as opposed to redemptive categories) are a matter of serious rebuke and warning. One can abandon the faith not only by thinking wrongly about salvific (redemptive) categories. One can abandon the faith by thinking wrongly about creational categories. Gnostics who deny the goodness of the created world can in no wise be saved.

I note this because in the recent past I was told that I should not camp on what we have noted are Gnostic errors. I was told “you should not spend so much time on these issues because they are not salvific.” I trust you see that the Holy Spirit did not reason that way so that we can say that where the spectre of Gnosticism arises in any area stiff warnings concerning it should be raised.

The Holy Spirit’s counsel here on these matters is straight forward. What God has made and given us , we are to received and render up thanksgiving.  There is an objective and subjective movement here. Objectively we are to receive all things created by God because God has made them. Subjectively we are to receive all things created by God in prayers, thus what we are thankful for in prayer is set apart both objectively by God’s Word and subjectively by our prayer.

Now we must throw in a caveat here. We must be precise because there are those who would make this passage walk on all fours and suggest that there is nothing that is restricted to them because God created everything. And so some might say that illicit drugs or excessive alcohol may be taken because they have been created by God. Or you will find that even Christians will say that I am a sodomite or I am a tranny and this is good because God has created me this way. This is a gross misuse of what is being taught here and fails to recognize the distinction between the good that has been created by God to be received in thanksgiving and the evil that is the result not of creation but of the fall.

What God created was male and female and the female as a compliment to the male which would result in heterosexual marriage. Heterosexual marriage as lived in the parameters of Scripture should be received as from God w/ thanksgiving but homosexual marriage, which can’t really exist is an abomination because it is a result of creation marred and fallen. The same is true with excessive alcohol intake or the intake of illicit drugs. These are part of creation and can be received with prayer and thanksgiving but they are can also be easily and are often abused revealing the fallenness of the person abusing.

I only note this because we still live in a Church environment that in many quarters seeks to normalize these things. For example, somewhere around 1/3 of the delegates to the last CRC synod voted in favor of having sodomites and lesbians be members of Christ’s church. Outside the Church we know of the attempt of the broader culture to normalize these things as seen in the fact that our new Sec’y of the Treasury is a sodomite who is allegedly married to another man and has a son. When St. Paul writes

nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is [l]sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

He is decidedly not talking about these kinds of abominations.

So we see here from this passage that when we are saved by Christ it is the whole man that is saved by Christ and the consequence of being saved by Christ is that we receive the good of creation as good from God. Our being owned by Christ makes us say, as G. K. Chesterton wrote,

“You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

This opens up before us the truth that all of life should be lived to the glory of God with thanksgiving unto God. It opens us to the fact that all of creation is God’s theater of glory that is to be received with prayer and thanksgiving. Not only are we to keep the Gnostics at bay in their 1st century incarnation of prohibiting food and marriage but we are to keep them at bay in their 21st century incarnation of prohibiting the embrace of gender, ethnicity/race.

God loves us in Christ and gave us all of life to enjoy. Let us enjoy it to His glory until we are brought up to enjoy eternal life.

More Reinforcement On The Current NAPARC Scene

Last night I heard from an old friend I had not spoken with in quite some time. He was on speaking terms with a Pastor in a NAPARC church in a region of the country far away from where I live. He knows of how I have mocked the NAPARC denominations citing their abandonment of the historic Reformed faith as seen in the persecutions of Rev. Michael Spangler, Rev. Michael Hunter, and Rev. Zach Garris.

He contacted me to blow off some steam. He himself does not attend a NAPARC Church but in the past has met a Pastor of a local NAPARC church through mutual friends. This NAPARC Pastor learned of my friends Kinist like beliefs and found himself compelled to grill my friend about his Kinist like beliefs in order to “set him straight.” It seems that this same Pastor, who thought that my friend (let’s call him “Derek”) was so potentially dangerous to the Christian faith because of his views on Kinism, was himself spending a good deal of time staring at the interesting things on the internet that one can stare at while on the internet. It seems this staring has gone on for a good amount of time and yet nothing of any consequence was done to this Pastor by NAPARC church leadership in light of this pastoral staring until only recently when a very slight slap on the hand was given for this improper pastoral ogling, gawking, and leering at internet images.

So, here we are in 2025 and owning views on race that have been owned by centuries in the Reformed Church and by the Fathers of the Reformed faith can get one tossed by clerical cultural Marxists in NAPARC churches but a preoccupation with improper internet staring is treated as if someone improperly belched while giving a sermon.

This reminds of another case I was aware of and involved with a few years ago. I knew a chap from Michigan who was Pastoring a flagship NAPARC church in a region of the country far away from where I live and this Pastor chap had the chops to criticize me online for my very traditionalist revisionist views on the War of Northern Aggression. It seems he thought that because we were both from Michigan and both Pastors that gave him some duty to lecture me. His views were politically correct and along the way I was privy to his incessant online charges of “racism.” His time in the ministry ended so badly that out of respect for what remains of his non-Pastoral life and out of respect for his family I will not go into any detail of how all this ended except to say it was the height of hypocrisy for him to be going all spastic against my pro-Southern views on the war of Northern Aggression while he was involved in the unseemly matters he was involved with and which eventually (sadly enough for he and his family) caught up with him.

All this to say that modern Reformed clergy, no doubt with notable exceptions, are a joke. Likewise modern Reformed NAPARC churches, exceptions notwithstanding, are merely pale (and sometimes not so pale) reflections of the broader WOKE culture. I would rather take Christian counsel and spiritual advice from my auto mechanic then listen to modern conservative Reformed NAPARC clergy. When the NAPARC clergy move their lips I hear the voices of Antonio Gramsci, Al Sharpton, and Ron Burns (aka –Thabiti Anybwile).  These are men who are condemning the theology of Calvin, Rutherford, Althusius, Augustine, Dabney, Thornwell, Palmer, and Girardeau all the while involved themselves in the grossest of inconsistencies. When I’m around these people (as long as my stomach can hold out) it is as if I am surrounded by grifters, snake oil salesmen, and intellectual dullards. I am thankful that there are exceptions but those exceptions are just that — exceptions.

Clearly, the Seminary system has failed and this is likely due to the fact that the Seminary Professors are cut from the same cloth as those who are graduating from these “conservative” cemeteries.

Yes, I realize this is a screed … a rant if you please. However, we are talking about the Church of Jesus Christ here and it strikes me that an occasional rant / screed is appropriate when living under our current Reformed Babylonian captivity.

Free Spangler, Hunter, and Garris.

Vice President J. D. Vance Sanctions Kinism … And The Fur Flies

“There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.  And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept of America First. It doesn’t mean you hate anybody else, it means that you have leadership. And President Trump has been very clear about this — that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British prime minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that’s a very welcome change.”

The idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does Anyone?

J. D. Vance 
Vice President of these united States 

“First, the kindred in blood, caeteris paribus, (all other things being equal), are more to be beloved than strangers, in those things which pertain to the good things of this life; and among those who are near in blood those who are nearest are most to be loved.”

William Ames — 1576-1633
Puritan Theologian
More Widely Read in Colonial America than Calvin and Luther combined

The Christians is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.”

Martin Luther

I notice over on X Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk and these CREC types who have forever bashed Kinism — which was the very embodiment of the Ordo Amoris — are now chirping in praise over J. D. Vance’s statements on the Ordo Amoris.

The problem w/ these CREC types is that they want to hold and embrace the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but the minute someone starts to apply it concretely by, for example, explaining that generally speaking (which is different than universally speaking) marrying outside one’s race is not a good idea precisely because of the teaching of the Ordo Amoris suddenly they get all outraged and are adamantly opposed to a basic derivative principle of the Ordo Amoris.

That marrying within your race is a basic principle of the Ordo Amoris was articulated in Church history repeatedly;

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine – (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

Dr. Clarence MacCartney – Presbyterian Minister
Colleague of the Great J. Gresham Machen

“It has become fashionable in recent times to talk of the leveling of nations, and of various peoples disappearing into the melting pot of contemporary civilization. I disagree with this, but that is another matter; all that should be said here is that the disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face. Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God’s design.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

These CREC guys want it both ways. They want to come across as perfectly orthodox in embracing the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but when it comes to the concrete suddenly they treat the Ordo Amoris like it is a Cross being presented to Count Dracula.

Failing that it could be just another case where these CREC types are sticking their fingers into the wind and seeing which way the wind is blowing are now setting their sails to catch this new wind.

However, there is another angle to all this and that is the countless number of putative theologians who are coming out of the woodwork to say that J. D. Vance and all of Church history up until 1950 or so are wrong. You can find some of that protest here;

Theologians push back on JD Vance’s view of ‘ordered love’

Over on X the Marxist minister Ron Burns is jumping up and down insisting that J. D. Vance and all of Church history is not as smart as he is. It seems Ron thinks that the parable of the Good Samaritan proves Vance wrong. However, it is the case instead that the parable of the Good Samaritan proves that Ron Burns couldn’t grossly mishandles Scripture.

Ron Burns and other on the Christian Marxist left appeals to the Parable of the Good Samaritan as the template that all Christians must use in order to demand that amnesty for illegal immigrants be put in place.

The Good Samaritan has been made the tool of Social Justice Warriors everywhere and by it we are being taught that in order to inherit eternal life we must disinherit ourselves and our children so that the alien and the stranger can inherit the here and the now. This is an exceptionally un-neighborly thing to do to our Children and our descendants. According to this interpretation the teaching of the Good Samaritan means that we must treat our children and our people as Aliens and Stranger in order to treat Aliens and Stranger like our children and our people.

The failure with this interpretation lies in the attempt to universalize a particular obligation. Jesus is teaching here in a very specific and particular situation.  The Lord Christ was not laying down policy for 21st century Nation States to take up. He was not creating new policy for Magistrates of all time everywhere to pursue. He was speaking to a religious Lawyer in order to crack his smug confidence that he indeed was a good person.

Jesus is giving ethical instruction, I believe, to the end that the Lawyer would see that he is not an ethical person. Yet the Ron Burns in the Christian world want to see the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a way to say that given their desire for open borders it is clearly the case that they are ethical people. In reality, by using the Good Samaritan parable wrongly the Thabiti Anybwile (Ron Burns) Marxists of the World can preen their self righteousness while seeking to foist guilt upon those who dare disagree with their gross misinterpretations.

The thinking that insists that the parable of the Good Samaritan is about immigration and amnesty policy, if taken literally, would mean the disappearance of borders and nations and peoples. It is a world where we can

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do

Upon giving this Parable, Jesus was not setting National or International Policy. He was not teaching on the Universal brotherhood of all man. He was not negating the reality of ever widening concentric circles of love whereby we first have to look out for our own and prioritized who are of the household of faith. Jesus was not negating the prioritizing of them who are of the household of faith in terms of our care and affection.

He is simply teaching that in the course of our daily living, as we walk through life, when we come upon a real live human being in desperate need of care we have a duty and privilege to care for the least of these.

Some will retort that by seeing this passage as individual and personal that I am not loving my neighbor. Some will insist that by not championing that the Government open up the borders that I am not loving my neighbor. But what of my next door neighbor who can’t find work? How loving is it to that neighbor to glut the market with cheap labor so he will never find work? What of the minority communities in this country who’s unemployment rate is 25-30% in some quarters? Is it neighbor love to them to insist on an amnesty which will cement their unemployment? Is it neighbor love to fellow Christians to invite in a global population that is hostile to Biblical Christianity? Is it neighbor love to Christian women to open the borders to those from misogynistic cultures?

Those who want to use the Parable of the Good Samaritan to the end of pursuing the Cultural Marxist agenda of Social Justice have only incompletely thought through the matter. In many instances the misuse of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is just a means to advance a liberal humanist non Christian agenda.

J. D. Vance and William Ames centuries before him are right, and the long tradition or the Ordo Amoris going back to Augustine and behind him to the Bible is the Christian way of thinking held to by millennium of Church history. Men like Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk, are poseurs who hold the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but blanch at any real application of the doctrine. Finally men like Ron Burns (Thabiti Anybwile) are just not Christian in contending that the Ordo Amoris is not a Christian Doctrine.

And I might add here in ending that the Kinists are incrementally being seen as vindicated. What Ames, and Luther and countless other Christians advocated centuries ago and what Vance is advocating today is what Kinists have been lambasted for and as seen in the cases against Spangler, Hunter, and Garris, Kinists are still being bashed for holding to the timeless Christian principle of the Ordo Amoris.

 

R2k fanboy Mike Horton vs. the Belgic Confession and John Calvin

“…we have the privilege of religious freedom for true and false worship in this country. Nevertheless, we do not expect the state to create opportunities for the advance of Christ’s kingdom through his means of grace.”

~ R2k “theologian” Michael Horton

Of course Horton is wrong here and is pushing the same tired error that the theological system of classical liberalism has always pushed. We decidedly do not have the privilege of religious freedom of true and false worship in this country. We only have the privilege of religious freedom for false worship in this country. We do not have the privilege of religious freedom for true religion in this country. I know this because the freedom of true religion in this country would make illegal all forms of false worship. Because all forms of false religions are not illegal in this country we decidedly do not have freedom of religion for true religion. The true religion of Christianity would not allow false gods to have equal time in the public square with the one true God. Now because the false gods have equal time with the one true God in this country, as required by the State, we clearly see that we do not, contra Mike Horton’s assertion, have freedom of religion in this country. I am not free to honor the God of the Bible above all other gods in this country therefore I am not free to practice my religion. My religion requires the elimination of all other gods from the public square. It requires me to support the elimination of all false worship. That is part of what the Bible’s 1st commandment means; “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

What is happening here is Mike, as a sub-Christian, is prioritizing the 1st amendment over the 1st commandment. Freedom of religion would mean that the people would be free to only worship the only one true God. Because I do not have that freedom, I decidedly do not live in a country with “freedom of religion.” Instead I live in a country that has freedom of religion for all religions except the one true religion.

Even The Belgic Confession of Faith, which Dr. Horton putatively confesses teaches;

“Their office (the magistrate) is not only to have regard unto and watch for welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted.”

Belgic Confession Article 36

Does anybody think that Mike really believes this?

And John Calvin also supports me and is against Dr. Horton;

In the Institutes Calvin says that;

“civil government has as its appointed end . . .to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church, to adjust our life to the society of men, to form our social behavior to civil righteousness, to reconcile us with one another, and to promote general peace and tranquility.” (4.20.2)

I would earnestly contend that that the promotion of general peace and tranquility cannot be achieved where false gods like Allah, the Jewish God, and the Hindu gods, are allowed to roam in the public square.

I hope God will grant grace to Mike and all the R2K fanboys to repent of this noxious doctrine of theirs.

NAPARC, Shadow Confessions, And The Ecclesiastical Lynching Of Godly Men

What Geerhardus Vos combatted as liberal scholarship, the Church today faces under the banner of evangelicalism only in reference to Cultural Marxism. Evangelical scholarship now stunningly embraces many of the assumptions and methods of Cultural Marxism. In Vos’ words Evangelicals seem

“……resolute in showing kindness for what once was called liberalism. To put it frankly, there is an unnerving sympathy within evangelical scholarship for seeking light in darkness, for synthesizing antithesis, and even for wedding belief and unbelief. It has become all too acceptable to appropriate the methods of unbelieving scholarship, to assert common ground with its unbelieving assumptions, and to give such syncretism some credible-sounding, winsome label like ‘believing criticism.’”

Geerhardus Vos

 

The Institutional Reformed Church keeps doing the orthodox folks among the Reformed rank and file the favor of showing us who they really are. Earlier this year the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) tossed one Rev. Michael Spangler from their midst using some of the most unique and contrived methodologies possibly imagined. Most recently the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) via a majority report in the Rio Grande Presbytery brought charges against Rev. Zach Garris for noting that inasmuch as the Scriptures regulate slavery therefore the Scriptures do not forbid all types of slavery. Over in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) they are cooking up much the same kind of feminine outrage and hissy fit over some of the vanilla type things that Rev. Michael Hunter has said or written on the subject of race.

Keep in mind that anything and everything these chaps are writing and speaking about race have been said repeatedly by Reformed divines throughout Reformed church history. It is not as if these three chaps are acting like the Confederate soldiers at Ft. Pillow. What Spangler, Hunter, and Garris have said and written is moderate and supported with varied and sundry quotes from Southern Presbyterians.

Yet, despite the moderation coming from the pens of these good men, the institutional structures of these NAPARC churches are hell bent on treating them as if they are King Kleagles of the Klan.

Matters have gotten so bad in today’s Reformed and Presbyterian Church Aimee Byrd, Duke Kwon, Lamont English, Greg Johnson, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and Ron Burns have eclipsed R. L. Dabney, J. Gresham Machen, Morton Smith, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, James Henley Thornwell and John Girardeau as the heroes of the faith.

This isn’t your Father’s Presbyterian Church.

What we have here is a clear demonstration that the Reformed denominations in America have gone WOKE. The Confessions that they say they subscribe to have been displaced by what might well be referred to as “shadow confessions.” Shadow Confessions are Confessions that operatively are controlling men and so the church but exist as not explicitly stated. What has happened in the previously “Conservative” “Reformed” denominations is what happened in the US as explained by Christopher Caldwell in his book; “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.” In that book Caldwell argues that with the passage and embrace of Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s the US, in a defacto sense, took on a new Constitution that replaced the previous Constitution. Caldwell argues that ever since that time the original Constitution has existed in name only.

The same type of thing has happened in Reformed denominations. The Westminster Confession and the Three Forms of Unity are still present but they really are not the confessional standard by which the Churches are ruled. Instead, a shadow confession has been owned and that is the real standard that these non-Christian clergy in the denominations are operating in terms of their allegiance.

That shadow confession amounts to an embrace of Cultural Marxism categories. There is a good deal of information on Iron Ink on the subject of Cultural Marxism and I urge you to probe Iron Ink for more information on what Cultural Marxism is but as a shorthand explanation Cultural Marxism embraces the “Oppressor vs. the Oppressed” narrative and applies it in the Church to how the white man, playing the Oppressor, has allegedly  mistreated the 0ppressed minority, oppressed females, and oppressed perverts. Now that we are aware of this long injustice we live in a time when the oppressed is to be given “justice” so that the oppressor is finally brought low. Part of this whole Cultural Marxist narrative that is operating as the shadow confession in the Reformed Church is the whole Critical Race Theory paradigm.

As a result of this shadow confession of Cultural Marxism / Critical Race Theory in the Church both the Scriptures and the Confessions are read through that prism and reinterpreted in light of these new reigning shadow confessions. The truth of this was underscored for me when I heard of a  ordination controversy that happened recently in one of the NAPARC denominations somewhere in the Southeast. It seems that the candidate up for ordination had admitted he was a socialist or had socialist leanings. There was some heated exchange on the floor until someone stood up and insisted that since the Westminster Confession didn’t speak explicitly to the issue of Socialism therefore there could be no barring of the candidate from being ordained. The problem with that reasoning is that it just isn’t so. Consider the Westminster Larger Catechism when explaining the sins that are condemned by the Eighth commandment;

 all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbour what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves;

The above could stand as a definition of Socialism as socialism withholds from our neighbor what belongs to him so that we can enrich ourselves and worse yet it uses the State to accomplish this larceny.

The candidate was ordained and became another WOKE clergy in the bulging ranks of our WOKE Reformed clergy.

It is these types that are going after Spangler, Hunter, and Garris and they are going after them with such success that one can only conclude that the modern NAPARC churches are, generally speaking, anti-Christ churches. The fact that they are wickedly pursuing god fearing men like Spangler, Hunter, and Garris are proof of that. The fact that they brought down men like Ryan Louis Underwood in the United Episcopal Church of North America a few years ago testifies to how ubiquitous this anti-Christ malady exists as among the “Reformed” “clergy,” and denominations.

I am being told that the cancer is especially bad in the PCA as among their Mission to the World organization. In that organization there is a black chap named Lamont English who has a title who seems to be best exemplifying this Cultural Marxist mindset. It is English (irony abounds) who pressed the case against Rev. Zach Garris. MTW has been a problem in the PCA for at least a couple decades as clear back in the late 1990s they were largely controlled by a pagan Psychology mindset. (First hand experience here.)

Of course most of the rank and file in these denomination are clueless about this controversy. Unfortunately, the rank and file tend to trust their Pastors which right now is like the goat herd trusting the Judas Goat to lead them.

I’m pretty sure that this is not going to change. The Cultural Marxists/CRT crowd are controlling these NAPARC denominations. It strikes me that we are at a time where Biblical Christians need to flee these anti-Christ denominations and start new ones.

Keep in your prayers Rev. Hunter, Rev. Spangler, and Rev. Garris. Pray that God would vindicate them upon their and His enemies.