Benny Hinn is nothing, if not entertaining. This clip is one of the funniest things you will ever watch. I love the way that the people go down like they’ve been shot. Benny Hinn would make a great professional wrestler. He already has the perfect costume with his geometrical hair and nehru jacket. I wonder if he has ever accidentally knocked himself out by scratching his face or adjusting his hair. Enjoy.
Categories: World Religion
Tagged: benny hinn, faith healing
This article was originally published in 1936, in “The Presbyterian Guardian.”
A very outrageous insult to the public press of this country, and particularly to the newspapers of Philadelphia, has appeared in the report of the Committee appointed at the last meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia to propose measures for the reorganization of the presbytery’s business in accordance with the principles laid down by the General Assembly’s Commission.
According to the principle of secrecy favored by that Commission, the Committee proposes that news as to what happens at presbytery meetings shall be given to the press only through the Stated Clerk:
“All information relating to the proceedings of Presbytery shall be given to the Press only through the Stated Clerk, and the Press shall be asked to co-operate with this rule.”
What does that mean? Well, in plain English, it means that only the ecclesiastical machine shall have the right to make public its version of what happens at the meetings. The minority is to have no such right. Here are certain people who are being done to death, ecclesiastically, in meetings of presbytery. Their opponents, through the Stated Clerk, are to be allowed to say anything they like about them, or to suppress the facts at will; but they are not to be allowed to say anything about what has happened. A worse piece of ecclesiastical tyranny, a greater encouragement to misrepresentation and suppression of facts, it would be difficult to imagine.
With such suppression of facts, with such partisan dishing out of the news, the press is to be “asked to co-operate.”
If the press did comply with this request, if it were willing to co-operate with any such policy of suppression of facts, if it did enter into any conspiracy of silence regarding what happens in the meetings of Philadelphia Presbytery or in any other meetings, if such a policy did represent the policy of the newspapers of this country, then we might look very soon for the destruction of the American commonwealth.
But I do not for one moment believe that the press will “co-operate” with any such business.
That does not mean that I hold the press to be perfect. I for my part have sometimes suffered considerably from what I have been compelled to regard as real incorrectness in the way in which I have been represented in the newspapers. That perhaps is only to be expected by anyone who is a representative of a very unpopular and widely misunderstood cause.
But I do not for one moment believe that such newspaper misrepresentation, where it has occurered, is intentional. I believe rather firmly that the press of this country is essentially “straight.” That is the reason why I do not believe that it will “co-operate” with this proposal of the ecclesiastical machine in Philadelphia Presbytery. I do not believe it will consent to suppress all news regarding those presbytery meetings except what comes from the party that at any moment is in power.
When I say that, I can in one respect rejoice. But in another respect I feel very sad. I feel very sad to think that the ethics of the public press of this country and the ethics of the general public are higher than the ethics of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. It is certainly a very sad thing that the ecclesiastical business of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. is conducted on a lower ethical plane that that which prevails in the world outside among people who make no profession of religion at all.
The Unpopularity of Sticking to the Point
In the controversies of recent years, I have often observed how unpopular a thing it is to stick to the point. People want to introduce personalities into the debate, and if one is not willing to introduce personalities it seem to drive them nearly to fury. They insist on turning aside from objections rasied against specific actions of ecclesiastical leaders in order to engage in general evaluation of those leaders’ character or motives.
So, for example, if I state that a moderator has appointed an Auburn Affirmationist to an important committee, what is the reply? Is there any idscussion of the propriety of that appointment? Is there any discussion of the specific point at issue? Not at all. The reply is: “That moderator is a Christian.” So personalitites take the place of real debate.
The discussion which I have carried on within the last few years with the supporters of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. is another isntance of the same thing. I think that discussion – by way of caricature, it is true, but still with a certain measure of that kind of truth that caricature sometimes possesses – might be summarized as follows:
MACHEN: “The Board of Foreign Missions has retained a signer of the Auburn Affirmation as Candidate Secretary.”
SUPPORTERS OF THE BOARD: “Dr. Robert E. Speer is a splendid Christian gentleman.”
MACHEN: “You are wandering from the question. What I said was that the Board of Foreign Mission has retained a signer of the Auburn Affirmation as Candidate Secretary.”
SUPPORTERS OF THE BOARD: “Dr. Machen, you are very bitter.”
Yes, it is a very unpopular thing to insist on sticking to the point.
Categories: Machen
Tagged: J. Gresham Machen, presbyterian church usa
I recently came across this section in Owen’s Works, Volume XII, page 34, where he comments on the Unitarian vision of Christ returning to establish an earthly kingdom.
“The reminding of these abominations gives occasion, by the way, to complain of the carnal apprehensions of a kingdom of Christ, which too many amongst ourselves have filled their thoughts and expectations withal. For my part, I am persuaded that, before the end of the world, the Lord Jesus, by his word and Spirit, will multiply the seed of Abraham as the stars of heaven, bringing into one fold the remnant of Israel and the multitude of the Gentiles; and that his church shall have peace, after he hath judged and broken the stubborn adversaries thereof, and laid the kingdoms of the nations in a useful subserviency to his interest in this world; and that himself will reign most gloriously, by a spirit of light, truth, love, and holiness, in the midst of them: but that he hath a kingdom of another nature and kind to set up in the world than that heavenly kingdom which he hath peculiarly exercised ever since he was exalted and made a ruler and a saviour, that he should set up a dominion over men as men, and rule, either himself present or by his substitutes, as in a kingdom of this world, which is a kingdom netiehr of grace nor glory, I know it cannot be asserted without either the denial of his kingdom for the present, or that he is or hitherto hath been a king (which was the blasphemy of Franciscus David before mentioned), or the affirming that he hath, or is to have, upon the promise of God, two kingdoms of several sorts; of which in the whole word of God there is not the least tittle.
Categories: Uncategorized
J. Gresham Machen never intended to accomplish all that he did. He did not set out to be the leader of the confessional/conservative movement in the PCUSA. He never intended to start a new seminary or denomination. Machen was not a man who desired to be famous or remembered for his achievements.
Like many (most?) men that God has enabled to reach lofty heights, Machen was not motivated to be great. Recently, I asked D.G. Hart, the world’s foremost Machen scholar, how Machen viewed himself. Did he see himself as a revolutionary and a Moses-figure, leading the confessionalists to the Promised Land? Hart said that first and foremost, Machen saw himself as a New Testament scholar. This was his passion and he was outstanding in the field. A life devoted to scholarship suited him well. He was an academic, not a warrior.
That changed with his first trip to the General Assembly of the PCUSA in 1920, where the Plan of Union was proposed. This called for the organization of “The United Churches of Christ in America.” The idea was to loosely unite about twenty Protestant denominations around a purposely vague creed, with the ultimate goal being full church union. This lowest common denominator version of Protestantism incensed Machen and he fought against it vigorously.
The publication of Christianity and Liberalism, in 1923, thrust Machen into his role as warrior. His goal was not to cause controversy, but to explain “the difference between modern ‘liberal’ religion and historic Christianity.” He concluded that they were two distinct religions. The success of this book elevated Machen to national acclaim and de facto leadership of the confessional/conservative wing of the PCUSA.
The reorganization of Princeton Seminary, in 1929, inspired Machen to make a bold move. In Machen’s eyes, the seminary was pronounced dead. The only choice for him was to start a new institution, Westminster Theological Seminary. He never intended to be the president of a seminary. He loved teaching at Princeton. Something had to be done, however, to carry on the spirit and doctrine of Old Princeton, and it fell to Machen to do it.
Jump to 1936. Machen was about to be defrocked by the PCUSA for starting the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, in response to a disheartening report on the state of Presbyterian Missions. The straw had broken the camel’s back. What could he do but start a confessional Presbyterian church, the Presbyterian Church in America (which later became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church)? Machen never intended to start a new denomination. According to D.G. Hart, he never would have left the PCUSA voluntarily, because he took his ordination vows so seriously. They forced him to leave and start a new church.
Machen was more of a survivor than a warrior. He never started a fight; the fight came to him. When his opponents decimated Princeton and the PCUSA, Machen brought the historic Reformed faith to new venues, where it still flourishes. A man who would have been content to be anonymous, left alone with his Greek Testament, became one of the enduring heroes of the Reformed movement and a warrior to rally behind.
Categories: Machen
Tagged: d.g. hart, J. Gresham Machen, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, presbyterian church usa, westminster theological seminary
This article was originally published in 1936, in “The Presbyterian Guardian.”
On March 2, 1936, there was railroaded through the Presbytery of Philadelphia a motion approving in principle a report of the General Assembly’s Special Commission to visit the Presbyteries of Philadelphia and Chester.
This was accomplished by a coalition between the “middle-of-the-road” or evangelical-in-fair-weather element in the presbytery with the beligerently Modernist element.
A typical representative of the middle-of-the-road element was the Moderator, Rev. Warren R. Ward, D.D., who, despite the fact that he has usually in the past been regarded as a member of the evangelical party in the presbytery, actually appointed a signer fo the Modernist “Auburn Affirmation” as a member of the all-important committee which is to suggest definite masures to put the provisions of the Report into effect.
What does the Report of the Commission, thus approved by the presbytery, really stand for? Let us strip off the superficial trappings of piety in which this wickedness is clothed, and look the thing in the face.
Five ugly words give the answer. I do not like to use ugly words, but ugly words must be used to describe an ugly thing. Those ugly words are Misrepresentation, Unbelief, Secrecy, Tyranny, Lawlessness.
I. Misrepresentation
In the first part of the Report, the Commission creates the general impression that during its sessions it gave an adequate hearing to all points of view and merely did not hear three individuals, who would not consent to take the pledge of secrecy that the Comission imposed. It does not mention the fact that one of the individuals was the Rev. H. McAllister Griffiths, representing a very distinct group in the Presbytery of Philadelphia. It does not mention the fact that Mr. Griffiths, after being refused a hearing except on the terms of secrecy, was not even permitted to present a written statement for the group of which he was a member. It also does not mention the fact that no member of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Mission in the Presbytery of Philadelphia was heard. Therefore the impression was made by this Report that the Commission gave an adequate hearing to all points of view is a misleading impression. To make such a misleading impression is Misrepresentation.
II. Unbelief
In Philadelphia Presbytery there are ten signers of the Modernist “Auburn Affirmation.” The Auburn Affirmation is a document expressing the point of view of unbelief. This Report, by the plainest implication, endorses the presence of signers of the Affirmation in the presbytery and the placing of them in positions of leadership. To endose unbelief is itself unbelief. Therefore the Report stands for Unbelief.
III. Secrecy
The Report advocates secret sessions of the presbytery and suggests such a policy as would really give only the presbyterial machine the right to make public its version of what takes place in the presbytery meeting. It seeks to deprive the rank and file of the Church of its right to know what its representatives in presbytery do. Thus it stands for Secrecy.
IV. Tyranny
The Report advocates disciplinary action against those who exercise the right of assembly to discuss theaffairs of the presbytery. It calls the exercise of such a right of assembly “caucuses” and actually allows itself to speak of it as “political trickery.” The right of assembly is absolutely essential to all liberty in church or in state. To deny such a right, as well as to deny the right of free speech (see III above) is Tyranny.
V. Lawlessness
The Report advocates a rotary system of election of Commissioners to the General Assembly. Thus it advocates the choice of Commissioners on the ground that they have not been to the Assembly before. The principle of government embodied in the Constitituion of the Church plainly contemplates their election on their ground of fitness and because they represent, in the issues before the Church, the will of the majority of presbytery. Thus the law of the Church has at the heart of it the principle of representative government. In discouraging representative government, as well as in doing the other things that we have already mentioned, the Report stands for Lawlessness.
Who are Guilty?
The misrepresentation, unbelief, secrecy, tyranny, and lawlessness of this Report are shared in by every member fo the Commission, and also by every member of presbytery who voted to railroad the action through the meeting on March 2, 1936. No doubt some were more guilty than others. Some may partly be excused on the ground that they were ignorant of what was being done. But even such ignorance is guilt. All who engaged in this proceeding were guilty. Guilt is personal. It is not our part, or the part of any man, to judge, but if a man fears God he should fear to engage in wickedness like that which is being practised by the ecclesiastical machine in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Some men in the presbytery do fear God. They fear Him far more than all ecclesiastical threatenings breathed out by this lawless Commisson of the General Assembly and by the subservient Presbytery of Philadelphia. They will never consent to conceal the facts; they will never make common cause with unbelief; they will never consent to secrecy in the affairs of the Church; they will never trample upon liberty; they will never connive at lawlessness. These men fear God more than they fear men. There are such men even now in the Philadelphia Presbytery.
Categories: Machen
Tagged: J. Gresham Machen, presbyterian church usa
This article is from “The Presbyterian Guardian”, originally published in 1936.
The second part of the covenant of the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union says that if efforts to bring about a reform of the Church fail and in particular if the tyrannical policy of the present majority triumphs the members of the Covenant Union will continue the true spiritual successon of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. regardless of cost.
But what is “the tyrannical policy of the present majority?”
The Ecclesiastical Trials
One manifestation of that tyrannical policy has received a great deal of attention, and it certainly deserves the attention that it has received. That is the attack which has been made upon the members of The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and upon the Rev. John J. De Waard and the Rev. Arthur F. Perkins.
The real issue in this attack has nothing whatever to do with the personality of the members of the Independent Board or of these other person. They might be the most insignificant, indeed they might even be the most morally contemptible, persons in the whole country; there might be a thousand other grounds for removing them from the Church : yet it would still remain true that the attack upon them on the particular gounds alleged in the mandate of the 1934 and 1935 General Assemblies and contained in the sets of charges and specifications brought against them in the individual trials constitutes an attack not upon any mere men but upon the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The whole upshot of the attack is to substitute the word of man for the Word of God and to dethrone Jesus Christ.
Refusal to License or Ordain Christian Men
What is not always sufficiently observed, however, is that this attack upon the Lordship of Christ has come also in another way. It has come in the attempt of presbyteries to set up such conditions for entrance into the ministry that no real minister of Jesus Christ can be received.
A particularly plain instance is found in the Presbytery of New Brunswick. That presbytery is the presbytery in the bounds of which Princeton Theological Seminary is situated. It constitutes one of the chief gateways into the ministry in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
On September 26, 1933, that presbytery actually placed in its “Manual” a provision that all persons who seek entrance into the presbytery by licensure, ordination or transfer, shall be examined as to their willingness to supoort the regularly authorized boards and agencies of the Church.
At the last meeting of that presbytery that I attended I saw exactly how that provision of the Manuel worked out.
A young man presented himself. I do not remember whether he was to be received under care of presbytery after he had been under the care of some other presbytery or whether he was already a licentiate. That does not make the tiniest bit of difference. The point is that he was being received. A step necessary to his final ordination was being taken.
Well, what happened? Something very simple happened. The young man was asked to come forward and take his seat at the front. He was then asked whether he would supprt the regularly authorized boards and agencies of the Church. He answered glibly in the affirmative. Then he was received.
The whole thing was done exactly as though one of the “constitutional questions” were being put.
What did that mean? Well, for one thing it meant that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A was being violated in the most outrageous possible way. The Constitution provides a lawful method by which requirements for entrance into the ministry like those to which that young man was being subjected can be set up. That method is the method of sending down to all the presbyteries an overture amending the Constituion so as to put in an additonal “constitutional question.” The Presbytery of New Brunswick was doing that very thing by its own individual and arbitrary act. One could scarcely imagine a more lawless act than that act of the presbytery.
But it was something more sacred even than the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. that was being violated.
What happens when a man gains his entrance into the ministry by pledging a blanket allegiance to human councils and courts, by promising to make the missionary message that he commends to his people conform to shifting majorities in the General Assembly?
Here is what happens – the man who does that commits a very dreadful offence, and all who encourage, or connive in, his action commit that dreadful offence with him.
The offence consists in substituting the word of man, as giving the content of the message that one will commend, for the Word of God.
A great many presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. are attempting young men to commit that dreadful offence, to gain an entrance into the ministry by the base act of promising implicit support of shifting human programs.
Some yield to the temptation. The presence of such men is the ministry is doing untold harm to prescious souls.
Others will not yield. They stand bravely by the Bible and the Constitution of the Church. These men in many instances are refused admission.
What are we going to do about it? I may have something to say about that question in the next issue of THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN.
Categories: Machen
Tagged: J. Gresham Machen, presbyterian church usa
On Friday, March 13, I will be traveling back to Hawaii to exhort at Kauai Reformation Church. It’s a good thing that I am a Calvinist or I would never fly over the ocean on Friday the 13th. Please pray for the dear people in Kauai as they have to listen to me after hearing Michael Horton last week. That’s like going from Kobe beef to Slim-Jims. They get to see the best and the worst of the URC in successive weeks. Aloha!
Categories: Uncategorized
This “new mystic” is named John Crowder and he is mixing all the worst of the old mystics with spiritual drug abuse. Wait until about seven minutes in when he “mainlines Jesus.” That’s right, he likens the experience of the Son of God to heroin. The misguided excess of the church of Corinth is alive and well. By the way, schwärmer means “radical” or “enthusiast.” This is how Luther and Calvin referred to the sixteenth century Anabaptists who were the spiritual ancestors to these new mystics, with their unmediated experience of God. These guys are closer to Plato, with their chain-of-being and absorption into the divine, than they are to Jesus. (HT Daily Scroll)
Categories: Ecclesiology
Tagged: anabaptists, john crowder, mysticism, schwermer
This article was originally published in “The Presbyterian Guardian,” in 1935.
What is the duty of Christian congregations or Christian individuals who find themselves in a church that is dominated by unbelief? Shall they remain in such a church, or shall they withdraw from it and become members of a consistently Christian church?
That is certainly the question of the hour for the orthodox part of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Various attempts are being made to answer the question. Various considerations are being urged on one side or the other.
If we separate from the existing church organization, it is being said, shall we be able to retain any of our congregational property, or will that all have to be abandoned to the uses of the existing organization?
On the other hand, if we remain in a church that is dominated by unbelief, does that not mean that we are simply heaping up greater resources for the Modernists in future years to use? Will not every gift that we make, every church building that we put up, be turned over ultimately to the uses of unbelief?
No doubt such considerations on one side or the other of this question are very interesting. I am bound to say in passing that the considerations in favor of separation seem to me to be much stronger than the considerations on the other side.
But I propose to the readers of this page that we should now approach the question in an entirely different way. I propose that we should see what the Bible has to say about the matter.
Does the Bible permit Christian people to live year after year, decade after decade, in a church that is so largely dominated by unbelief as is the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.?
The answer to that question is surely not difficult. I am not thinking just now so much of individual texts directly bearing on the question, though those texts are not difficult to find and though they are not really balanced by any texts on the other side; but I am thinking of the Bible’s whole teaching about the Church and what the Church ought to mean in the individual’s Christian life. If we read what the Bible says about the Church and then examine the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., can we really put our hands upon our hearts and say in the presence of God that the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. even approximates being what the Bible says a church of Jesus Christ must be or provides that nurture which the Bible says every Christian ought to have?
Now I know very well that we ought to be careful when interrogating the Bible on this point. Sometimes, when the Bible speaks about the Church, it is speaking about the Church as it will finally be when it appears without blemish before Christ. We have no right to demand of the Church militant a perfection that will belong only to the Church triumphant – to the Church in its final, glorious state. When the Bible speaks of the Church militant, the Church as it actually appears upon this earth, it detects always a presence of error and sin in that Church, and it does not permit a Christian to withdraw from that Church or any branch of that Church just becasue that Church or that branch of it is not perfect.
All this is true. But it really does not apply to the situation in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The point is that that Church is very largely dominated by unbelief. It does not merely harbor unbelief here and there. No, it has made unbelief, in the form of a deadly Modernist vagueness, the determinative force in its central official life.
Such a body is hardly what the Bible means by a church at all. The Bible commands Christian people to be members of a true church, even though it be an imperfect one. It represents the nurture provided by such a true church as a necessity, not luxury, in the Christian life.
There must therefore be a separation between the Christian and the Modernist elements in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. That is perfectly clear. The only question is how the separation shall be effected.
Unquestionably the best way would be the way of reform. If Modernism should be removed from the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., and that church should be brought back to conformity with its constitution and with the Word of God, all would be well.
The other way is the way of separation from the existing organization on the part of the loyal part of the church. Only, if the separation comes it ought to come in such fashion as to make perfectly clear the fact that those who are separating from the present Modernist organization are not founding a “new church,” but are carrying on the true, spiritual succession of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
Something will no doubt be said regarding both of these possibilities on this page in future issues of THE PRESBYTERIAN GUARDIAN.
Categories: Uncategorized
- March 4, 2009, John MacArthur opened his Shepherd’s Conference with a “focus on how self-respecting evangelicals should affirm literal six-day creationism.” This comes two years after “Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Pre-Millennialist.” MacArthur got torched by the Reformed community for his last remarks (see Kim Riddlebarger’s response). I suspect that he will be singed again.
Here are some highlights from the live blog found at the Shepherd’s Conference sight, mixed with my interjections in italics:
MacArthur closed the session with a discussion of environmentalism:
I am unsure as to why MacArthur likes the adjective “self-respecting.” If someone does not interpret Scripture as he does, that person, apparently, has no self-respect. I find that unusual.
I also find it unusual that MacArthur places his interpretation as the standard of orthodoxy. Either someone agrees with him or that person is unfaithful to Scripture. His individual interpretation is equated with the Bible, i.e., if you do not agree with him, you do not believe the Bible. It is amazing that one man can take the place of 2,000 years of creedal statements and become his own standard of orthodoxy.
John MacArthur has had a fruitful ministry for many years. He has fought valiantly for the truth of the gospel. Unfortunately, in recent years, he has allowed the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty to cloud his thinking. His interpretation is not the gateway to orthodoxy. I will side with the historic Reformed Confessions over the opinion of one man.
Categories: Biblical Interpretation
Tagged: john macarthur, shepherds conference, creation, genesis
