The Presbyterian Gospel

http://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc313/

This podcast is only for those who can stomach Presbyterian polity. I myself cannot...except that it reinforces one of my life maxims.

"I wake up every day, look in the mirror and thank God that I'm not a Presbyterian."

Discussions like the one heard in this podcast only reinforce this belief.

But seriously it is illustrative of one thing that I frequently notice...for Presbyterians nothing is more important than polity. It is their Gospel.

A slander? Outrageous? No way. I stand by that charge.

You could agree with them on 95% of doctrine and yet if you won't go along with their polity they will exclude you and reject your status as a Christian. They then try to deny that charge by playing fast and loose with theological terminology but it's really quite simple.

If a professing believer attends your assembly and you deny them Communion your statement couldn't be any clearer.

"You are not in Communion with us. We don't recognize you as part of the Church. You're Christian profession has been evaluated and rejected."

Time and time again I've seen 'Stealth' Presbyterian church plants... this is what I call them. They come in and try to take over a sinking or almost defunct Methodist congregation or some other Mainline group. They don't really care that no one there is Reformed...or even solid in their Christian profession! You can be Charismatic, Pelagian, Dispensational....along as you're willing to become a Presbyterian in your polity.

I walked into one of these Stealth Church Plants years ago and started talking with folks. It was very puzzling as I started to realize no one there seemed to have any familiarity with the Bible or the Gospel. They were multi-generational Methodists that had grown up drinking the poison of Mainline Liberal Theology viz., they were completely secular in their opinions.

The United Methodist Episcopate had shut down their congregation and they were trying to save the building. Their ancestor's names were in the stained glass windows, their grandparents in the adjacent cemetary. One of them had a friend who was a Reformed Baptist (a devoted Mohlerite) who brought them to the attention of a conservative Presbyterian body. These elders came in and were trying to bring these people into Presbyterianism. They were going along with it because they wanted to save their building. When the Presbyterians talked about moving them to a better location... this was a very rural location surrounded by Amish farms and a mobile home park of ill repute....the people began to revolt.

No, all that matters is that everyone submits to the polity and is willing to let them step in and run the show. They want the established congregation and the building and then they figure they can weed out some, win over some and get some new people to come in.

But the way it's done is duplicitous. It's building the Church through bureaucratic sleight of hand. I've seen them happily admit people who can barely explain the ABC's of the Gospel but turn away others who dare to question their extra-Biblical polity, which I would add is a patent rejection of the Sufficiency of Scripture.

This podcast deals with a congregation in Upstate New York that came into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and was embraced even though they were basically Wesleyan Charismatics. Doctrinally this is in many ways the antithesis of what Reformed theology is supposed to be about, but they were happy to embrace them because they submitted to Presbyterian polity.

Now they had their concerns. This Holiness group had some authoritarian tendencies. The elders basically thought they spoke for God and their decision had to be obeyed, and they often strayed into personal areas where they didn't really belong.

I guffawed when I heard this. What an outrageous thing for Presbyterian leaders to say! That's one of the worst cases of the pot calling the kettle black that I've heard in quite awhile.

Listen if you can stomach it.