Southern Baptist “Financial Crisis” May Not Be Good News
The President of the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Gnostic heretic David Platt, has announced a financial crisis and the inevitable dismissal of between 600 and 800 missionaries accordingly. I was initially rejoicing at this good news before I came to my senses.
While it may be good news that there will be 600-800 fewer people spreading the false gospel of progressive justification all over the globe while being paid for it by dumbed down professing Christians, in reality, something else may be afoot.
In the minds of the Neo-Calvinists who have taken over the SBC, there is only one thing that is preventing them from taking over the whole world with their historical-redemptive worldview; those in the church hopelessly bound, albeit anemically, to a historical-grammatical view of reality.
Now look, in the past, I have owned several businesses and know as well as anyone else that you can make company accounting books say anything you want them to say; is the IMB really in the red, or is this a ploy to purge missionaries who don’t get it?
I know at least this much: if missionaries really need to be cut, and the SBC is comprised of Biblicists and Christocentric Gnostics, and it is, and the latter is running the show, and they are, who gets laid-off is going to be selective. Do you really think Platt is going to lay-off any YRR (Young, Restless, Reformed) Brownshirts? No way. Note this from the news account:
The first of the cuts will come from voluntary retirements, followed by a restructuring.
That would be the earthy old fogies more inclined to a historical-grammatical view of reality. That would be the old guard who are getting what they deserve. They let the foxes into the henhouse, so let them take their medicine.
David Platt has something else to gain in this for the Neo-Calvinist movement. He can blame the old guard for getting the SBC into this mess, and hark! it took a YRR to see the problem. And this is typical: Calvinism is obviously going to have a relaxed view of evangelism; so, while the Neo-Calvinists are the cause of the decline, they can claim to be the solution.
Destructive social movements always supply their own demand. They create the problem, and then claim to be the solution. In the same way, the viral Reformed biblical counseling movement is inundating the SBC as a result of the SBC faithful getting a consistent dose of messages based on condemnation from Neo-Calvinist pulpits. Who would not seek counseling after being told that they are totally depraved week in, week out? However, and likewise, this is a purging process. The counseling construct is “redemptive church discipline.” The primary goal of this counseling is to determine what gospel individuals hold to. The counselee presentation problems are not the issue though that’s the pretense; the real issue is the worldview of the counselees. This is why the present-day “biblical counseling” movement that presently saturates the SBC is producing church discipline and marital divorce at epidemic proportions.
Am I suggesting that this latest SBC drama could be more of a purge than a real and present financial crisis? Pretty much.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
You might be on to something here about the crisis. I definitely agree they are taking advantage of a crisis. Just a few months ago, Platt was all rah rah about sending many more missionaries and downplayed the deficit.
The real truth is that most YRR guys were NOT interested in the mission field because they had redefined it as planting churches in surburban America. But that has not worked out real well. So there are most likely not many YRR missionaries. So I think you are on to something when you suggest they are getting rid of older missionaries who are not so gullible as the YRR and don’t buy into the entire determinist structure. This crisis is a great way to get rid of them.
But let us never forget that Platt’s church was not giving to the CP program. It was not until he got the job he said he “saw the beauty of the CP”. So they appointed a not only a non supporter of the CP but a very inexperienced administrator “personality” for a reason. And we can guess what that reason is.
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