Counseling: Yes We Do
Susan and I are starting to get more inquiries about our informal/confidential Bible-centered counseling. This is something that we have never promoted, but it seems to be taking on a life of its own. We do this face to face, via webcam, or voice-only Skype/Oovoo. And it is totally free. You can also remain anonymous through many of these services (e.g., Skype).
Though I have two counseling certificates from NANC (level one and level two) we utterly reject the progressive justification construct of their counseling and that of CCEF. Susan and I believe Christians can really change, and that there is something we can actually do in regard to our problems. We believe that there are many biblical promises to be seized through knowledge and obedience, and the Christian life is much more than contemplationism.
Inquire by email: mail@ttanc.com or pmd@inbox.com, or sdd@inbox.com.
paul
Christian Husbands and Fathers Will Be Held Accountable for Leading Their Families in Calvinism’s False Gospel
I see a significant laxness towards doctrinal issues in regard to where one goes to church, especially from husbands, and fathers. “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD (Joshua 24:15)” is now, But as for me and my household, we will follow the elders. Certainly, the church has never been fuller of mindless, man-following, wimpy husbands.
Husbands are supposed to be like Christ. Christ washes His church in the water of truth. Yes, I know the womenfolk can think for themselves. Here at PPT/TANC, it is mostly women who show theological aptitude in our correspondence with friends of the ministry. Nevertheless, Ephesians chapter five makes it clear that men are responsible for leading their families in truth—not alone, but they are certainly to be in the lead or at least a co-lead for crying out loud. And by the way, elders are nowhere to be found in Ephesians five. Men, Reformed elders have NO authority in your home, period! YOU, and you alone are the pastor of your home. And if you are mixing it up with some Reformed elders who do not get that (and few do), take this advice from someone who learned the hard way: go to your local police station and get a restraining order based on stalking laws, and then notify the local press that you have done so.
Christ said that those who learn His truth and apply it to their lives, and teach others to do the same will be great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19). But many husbands in our day want to be great in the eyes of pompous philosopher kings. Christ warned that the LEAST of His commandments were not to be “relaxed.” Many pathetic, spiritually effeminate husbands in our day allow their families to attend Reformed churches that teach the following:
1. Progressive justification.
2. Gospel contemplationism.
3. The complete eradication of self-worth and confidence in applying God-given talents to life.
4. Elder absolution.
5. “Community” as the focal point of all life in Christ.
6. Elder intermediate interpretation of the Bible.
7. Antinomianism.
Basically, they have relinguished total control of their families to sectarian brute beasts. They would do anything that a Reformed elder told them to do, and often do so accordingly. Look, we deal with this. Even husbands who leave Reformed circles have a sort of Stockholm syndrome. They are full of fear, and their life is in turmoil just because they asked a few questions. I correspond with people who are in these groups and are afraid to leave. They are clearly brainwashed, but a consistent comment is, “The leadership doesn’t like to be questioned.” We have even offered asylum to one person in the form of housing, work, and legal counsel. Huh? Right, these groups, i.e., New Calvinism, use “biblical counseling” to gather data on people and then clearly use that information to control them. This is commonplace in the movement. Unless you want a couple of hundred people knowing about sin that you have repented of when you are “brought up before the congregation”—you will play ball the way the elders want you to. Or else.
Doctrinal discrepancy is reason enough, but many husbands relinquish their responsibility before God to lead their home and support this tyranny with their money. After all, not tithing can get you brought up on church discipline in these churches. This is yet another thing that is becoming commonplace as this Reformed movement grows unhindered and unquestioned.
But I have to believe that there will be a day of reckoning, and doctrinal ignorance will be no excuse.
paul
2013 Brings New Resolution for TANC
Truth is, I never wanted any of this. I have always been just an average Joe who just loves the truth. I was saved in 1983 and thought I knew a lot until 1988 rolled in. God brought a major crisis into my life and a long distance teacher for the class: Jay Adams. I thought I knew even more, which I did, but had no idea how much more God wanted me to learn. In circa 2000, a new pastor replaced the founding pastor of Clearcreek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio. I was a longtime member there, former elder, and it was the church my children grew up in.
For six years, I chalked up the weirdness to a different preaching style. I deemed those who left because of the new preaching as former pastor following malcontents. I didn’t think much of the sudden influx of families from Emanuel Baptist Church in downtown Dayton. I had no idea that an orchestrated takeover was in motion. In 2006, the weirdness just got too intense and I realized that the very gospel that I thought I knew was being challenged. Basically, I guess my problem is that I believe words mean things, and the question was clear: had I been leading my family in a false gospel of some kind for twenty-three years? They posited that challenge—not me. Was I not to take it seriously?
I only wanted answers. I asked many questions, but clear answers were not forthcoming. They could have met with me and explained what was going on. But no, they knew what they were teaching was controversial. They knew that the theological elephant had to be fed to the congregation a bite at a time. Besides, their doctrine holds to the idea that “showing forth the gospel” alone brings about change. The congregation didn’t need to be taught doctrine—they just needed to be shown the glory of the gospel in everything that was taught and they would change without even realizing it.
Doctrinal discussion would be a quibbling about how the living water was filling their cups, and that would not be tolerated. Those who quibbled about doctrine were brought under “redemptive church discipline” which focuses on showing the doctrinally concerned subject how evil they are. There is only one issue—how depraved you are as set against God’s holiness. If they can get you to see that, the counseling/discipline will achieve its redemptive goal and you will be well on your way to daily salvation and perpetual justification so that you may “stand in the judgment.” This is why “Pastor” Kennedy told my daughter that my life was “full of sin and evil.” What sin and evil? Specifics don’t matter; I believed I also had some goodness within me—game over. I was living in Luther’s “glory story” and not the “cross story”—all bets were off.
I was confused. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. The tension between me and the elders was getting worse and worse and I didn’t know how to stop it. And no one else could figure it out either. So, in desperation and confusion, others threw all kinds of counsel at me in hopes something would hit the target. No matter how much I obeyed the elders and their counsel, more was demanded because I thought those things pleased the Lord. The fact that I thought I could please the Lord was the glory story—they had to get me out of that story and into the cross story. And they couldn’t tell me that because then they wouldn’t know if it was my doing or the Spirits doing. They needed to break my will. I needed to see that I couldn’t please the Lord. I needed to see that I must “live by the gospel.”
And sadly, I must admit, they probably thought, and still think, that they were acting in love. But Jim Jones thought he was acting in love as well. I was falling, falling, falling, and didn’t know how to stop it. The Spirit wasn’t telling me what they wanted me to know. I lost my wife of 24 years. I lost four years of living in the same house with my son. I lost my name and my reputation. I lost all of my friendships of 20-plus years connected with the church. Those who I had pastored thought that I probably committed adultery as the specifics of my “sins” were not announced when I was excommunicated.
The specific “sins” were not the issue; the issue was the fact that I thought I had some goodness within me. That is a sin that rises to the level of church discipline—it is the only sin that matters. These people call church discipline “redemptive” for a reason. Words mean things. So what if my friends of over twenty years thought I was an adulterer? What the Lord knew about me was much worse anyway. Right?
Sadly, as John Immel so eloquently articulated in last year’s TANC conference, logic can lead to the most heartless activity with a clear conscience. Recently, at a concert, I observed several young people there who I had taught back-in-the-day at the Chapel. We are talking about young adults in their twenties. I taught them when they were just children as the AWANA commander at the Chapel. One that I did not see there, Danny, had once fulfilled an elementary school assignment by writing that I was the non-family member in his life that he looked up to most. He would later write as a young man on a Facebook page during the incident that I was a deadbeat that abandoned his family. The elders were propagating ideas at informal membership gatherings that they would not verbalize to mediators that were trying to intervene. They have also refused to put the specifics of why I was excommunicated in writing. They have also refused to release the counseling records associated with the incident which should serve to vindicate them. But, people just wouldn’t understand that what I didn’t do isn’t the issue—the issue is the sin of thinking one has goodness within them.
In situations like this, the wounds are many faceted and difficult to document. In some ways, their Reformed forefathers were kinder by burning those who thought they had goodness within them at the stake—those who dared to posit a doctrine of glory versus Luther’s Theology of the Cross. The list could go on: those young people I saw at that concert consider me an enemy rather than a long-known confidant. Susan, my wife, and ministry partner, has lost several friends of 20+ years because of her support of this ministry. Friends are very important to Susan, and she doesn’t know any person other than me who has even set foot in Clearcreek Chapel’s building. False doctrine’s effect on life is truly incalculable.
Why? I did everything they wanting me to. I came back and allowed them to hold me hostage for four months. I even took the job that they wanted me to take. Why? Because I wanted to understand. I wouldn’t put 100% trust in the sultans of the cross story. I would not find absolution in them. That was my downfall.
Or was it a downfall? How else would I know why it happened? Because Protestant academics finally came along and taught me? Hardly. I now know because of my own intensive research over a six-year period. I had to know why. Now I know. This brings up an issue about me. I like challenges, but once I meet my goal, I tend to move on. The tenacity of my research was measured by the pain. I often hear people say, “Paul, this research just totally blows me away. What in the world drives all of this?” Answer: pain, and not understanding why it had to happen. But now I know why. And God has given me a wonderful new life with wonderful new friends—though fewer. The goal has been reached. And I have learned doctrinal things that I would have NEVER learned in seminary.
But now there is a new goal….the pain of others. Others need to know why. The new goal is founded in the emails I get:
Paul, we are all just walking around in our church [longtime members of over 20 years] like bewildered zombies. We don’t know what’s going on. Can you help us?
Yes I can. And you can be damn sure that as long as the Lord gives me breath, I will. I understand now, but will I walk away from those who were in my shoes almost six years ago? I will not. When it was apparent to me that I was well on my way to figuring all of this out, I tried to get other ministries and people with more credentials to take over so that I could go back to fishing. I even offered to give them all of my research that I used to write The Truth About New Calvinism. Long story short—that was an education in, and of itself. What prompted my meeting with church historian John Immel was also along these lines. Apparently, the Lord had different ideas. The meeting with Immel showed me that the road was not yet finished.
So, in 2013, TANC will,
1. Focus on educating doctrinally illiterate Protestants who are that way by Reformed ecclesiastic design. The fruit does not fall far from the Catholic tree.
2. Continue to articulate in better and better ways why Calvinism is a false gospel.
3. Network with others to expose the roots and causes of spiritual despotism.
4. Prevention: we have seen a progression of churches finding out that they have a New Calvinist applicant in the middle of the process rather than afterwards. The goal is an increase of instances where such applicants are weeded out by the pulpit committee before they are even considered.
5. Network with others to develop alternatives to Protestantism.
6. Call on others to help us, especially through the $5.00 box program.
7. Call on others to pray for us—that the Lord would be with us in a mighty way, and that we would not fear in seeing His power in this ministry.
Does the Lord want me to do this? Well, I am not one to speak for Him unless it is something specific in Scripture, but in light of what He has brought me through and what he has taught me in the process with opportunities to serve others to boot, I think so.
Nevertheless, here I go with all the strength that is in me, and if the Lord doesn’t want me to do it, He is certainly able to stop me.
But He will be the only one who can.
paul
Ground Zero: Pope Gregory and New Calvinist Gospel Contemplationism
“Monks. That’s what we are missing here. Martin Luther. Ever heard of him? He was a monk.”
“In that Disputation, Luther postulates Pope Gregory’s take on the gospel which is the exact same calling card of present-day New Calvinism.”
“Powlison points to Pope Gregory and Augustine as the pioneers of biblical counseling using a ‘Christ-centered,’ ‘full gospel’ approach. And what was that approach?”
Let’s just take one contemporary example: a Presbyterian church that is now a mere shell of what it was; the remains of a war over the arrival of a New Calvinist pastor who exhibited outrageous behavior and leadership style. Today, some parishioners stand dumbfounded that the Presbytery took positive steps to keep said pastor in place.
As TANC, our newly formed think tank that researches Reformed theology continues to journey into church history for answers, the reasons for present-day tyranny in the church become clearer every day. First, it is driven by the gospel that founded the Reformation. Simply put, it is a gospel that does not believe that people change, but are rather called to contemplate the saving works of Christ in order for His righteousness to be manifested in one of two realms. Whether Baptist, Methodist, or whatever, this Reformed seed, the idea that people really don’t change is at the core of their function though they would deny it verbally. The Western church as a whole buys into this basic concept.
Secondly, the basic concept of spiritual elitists ruling over the totally depraved. You know, the they really can’t change crowd. The Reformation clarion call of total depravity—what’s our second clue if we need one? The spiritual is accessed through the chief contemplationists, and since they have the dope directly from God, they should rule over the totally depraved. Look, I have been a Baptist since 1983, and this is how it works. Again, we wouldn’t verbalize that, but to some degree it is true of all Western denominations because we are the children of the Protestant Reformation. What were we protesting? Naughty philosopher kings; past that, not much.
If we don’t change, the church doesn’t either. Think about that. And we wonder why things are a mess. Apparent growth in numbers is being driven by something else other than a true gospel. And the Reformers deny that while pontificating total depravity. It is testimony to the depth of which this Protestant construct has dumbed down the average parishioner; i.e., the totally depraved change. And nobody blinks. The assumption is that total depravity only pertains to the unregenerate, but that’s not the case according to the Reformed gospel and its time for people to start doing the math on that. The “Nones” and the massive exodus from the evangelical church is taking place for a reason.
I’m not ready to declare Pope Gregory the Great the father of the Reformation and present-day New Calvinism just yet, but recent discoveries reveal some things that should be fairly obvious. We aren’t stupid, just trusting, and that needs to end. Christians need to take advantage of the information age and start studying for themselves as the Christian academics of our day refuse to be forthcoming. They didn’t forget to mention that sola fide is also for sanctification. They didn’t forget to mention the total depravity of mankind AND the saints. They didn’t forget to mention that the new birth is a realm and not something that happens in us—it’s deliberate deception because the Reformed gospel is “scandalous.” The totally depraved are not “ready” for what the enlightened class of philosopher kings understand. By the way, many seminary students will testify to the fact that they are told as much by their seminary professors. Seminaries are where you go to be certified for the purpose of ruling over the totally depraved in order to, in Al Mohler’s words, “save them from ignorance.” Sorry, I prefer to let the Bible and Google save me from ignorance. Thank goodness for the Gutenberg press.
Monks. That’s what we are missing here. Martin Luther. Ever heard of him? He was a monk. What is the very premise of monkism? It’s the idea that the spiritual is obtained by contemplationism. And monkism is not unique to the Catholic Church—it is the link from the Catholic Church to the ancient concept of mystic dualism. Though it pans out in various different ways, it’s the idea that matter is evil and spirit is good. In other cases, it holds to the idea that both good and evil are necessary to understand true reality. Good defines evil, and evil defines good. The more you understand both, the more “balance” you have in the universe. Then there is the goal to birth the spiritual into the physical through meditation/contemplationism. Like I said, there are many takes on the basic approach.
Monks believe that the physical or world realm is a distraction from the spiritual realm. In some cases, they believe that all matter is merely a form of the perfect, or spiritual. Hence, monasteries. Traditionally, monasteries have been clearing houses for the dope from God through contemplationism. And since they have the dope, they should rule the totally depraved for their own good. In some spiritual caste systems, the monks rule directly, in others like the Catholic Church, the monks are the Scribes and Prophets for the rulers; i.e., the Popes.
The fact that monkism would be part and parcel to any doctrine formulated by Martin Luther is a no-brainer. Mysticism is simply going to be a significant factor, and so it is with Protestantism. This becomes more apparent when you consider the core four of the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther, John Calvin, St. Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great. Luther’s 95 Theses was a protest against naughty Popes, but he was completely onboard with the Catholic caste system. When his 95 Theses resulted in the unexpected societal eruption that took place, he presented a doctrinal disputation to the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg. And don’t miss this:
In that Disputation, Luther postulates Pope Gregory’s take on the gospel which is the exact same calling card of present-day New Calvinism. In theses 27 of his Disputation, Luther states the following:
Thus deeds of mercy are aroused by the works through which he has saved us, as St. Gregory says: »Every act of Christ is instruction for us, indeed, a stimulant.« If his action is in us it lives through faith, for it is exceedingly attractive according to the verse, »Draw me after you, let us make haste« (Song of Sol. 1:4) toward the fragrance »of your anointing oils« (Song of Sol. 1:3), that is, »your works.«
There could not be a more concise statement in regard to the New Calvinist gospel. Deeds in the Christian life come from the same acts in which Christ saved us. Secondly, they are not our acts, but the acts of Christ applied to our Christian lives by faith alone. Thirdly, when the works of Christ are applied to our Christian lives by faith alone, it will always be experienced by the exhilarating emotions of first love—this is the mark of Christ’s active obedience being manifested in the spiritual realm through the totally depraved. We “reflect” the works of Christ by faith alone. Even John MacArthur has bought into this nonsense, claiming that obedience to the Lord is “always sweet, never bitter.” Francis Chan states that it always “feels like love.” And of course, poke John Piper’s rhetoric anywhere and this same monkish mysticism comes oozing out.
Moreover, Luther states this same concept from many different angles in his Disputation, and theses 28 is clearly the premise for John Piper’s Christian Hedonism.
No wonder then that New Calvinists of our day sing the praises of Pope Gregory. Here is what heretic David Powlison stated in an interview with Mark Dever’s 9Marks ministry:
Caring for the soul, which we try [try?] to do in biblical counseling, is not new. Two of the great pioneers in church history would be Augustine and Gregory the Great. Even secular people will credit Augustine’s Confessions as pioneering the idea that there is an inner life. Augustine did an unsurpassed job of tearing apart the various ways in which people’s desires become disordered. Gregory wrote the earliest textbook on pastoral care. He pioneered diverse ways of dealing with a fearful person, a brash and impulsive person, an angry person, an overly passive person. He broke out these different struggles and sought to apply explicitly biblical, Christ-centered medicine—full of Christ, full of grace, full of gospel, and full of the hard call of God’s Word to the challenges of life.
Powlison points to Pope Gregory and Augustine as the pioneers of biblical counseling using a “Christ-centered,” “full gospel” approach. And what was that approach? It was primarily contemplationism and dualism. In fact, Gregory practically saw “doing” as a necessary evil. In Roland Paul Cox’s Masters dissertation, Gregory the Great and His Book Pastoral Care as a Counseling Theory, Cox states the following:
The overall theme in Gregory’s dichotomies is balance. It is possible that this comes from Gregory’s own struggles in balancing his desire for the contemplative life of a monk versus his reluctant, but active, service as ambassador to Constantinople and pope.“The Regula Pastoralis was in large part devoted to describing how to reconcile the two types of life. He came to the conclusion eventually that while the contemplative life was the better and more desirable of the two, the active life was unavoidable, and indeed necessary in order to serve one’s fellow man.…There could be no better exemplar of the two lives than Gregory himself, but he would have been less than human had he not from time to time mourned the fact that so much of his time must be given over to the active at the expense of the contemplative” [Jeffrey Richards, Consul of God : The Life and Times of Gregory the Great (London ; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 57.].
Powlison, in true Reformed tradition, invokes the either/or hermeneutic, or the either cross story or glory story hermeneutic of Luther’s Disputation by suggesting that any denial of this “Christ-Centered” approach is a wholesale denial of an “inner life.” In other words, suggesting that doing something should be emphasized as much as contemplationism is paramount to denying that there is an inner life. Such statements by Powlison are indicative of his utter lack of integrity.
In addition, Gregory’s penchant for mystic dualism is seen in the same dissertation:
Gregory’s view of health revolved around balance. In Pastoral Care 34 dichotomies are given. For each one Gregory discusses how either extreme is detrimental. The following are a few examples of Gregory’s dichotomies: poor/rich, joyful/sad, subject/superiors, wise/dull, impudent/timid, impatient/patient, kindly/envious, humble/haughty, obstinate/fickly, and gluttonous/abstemious. Further, Gregory explains how certain traits although they appear to be virtues are in reality a vice. For example, in describing the dichotomy of impatient and patient, Gregory says the following about the patient: “…those who are patient are to be admonished not to grieve in their hearts over what they suffer outwardly. A sacrifice of such great worth which they outwardly offer unimpaired, must not be spoilt by the infection of interior malice. Besides, while their sin of grieving is not observed by man, it is visible under the divine scrutiny, and will become the worse, in proportion as they claim a show of virtue in the sight of men. The patient must, therefore, be told to aim diligently at loving those whom they needs must put up with lest, if love does not wait on patient” [Pastoral Care: pp. 109, 110].
In other words, self-control is a vice. Unless cross-centered love is mystically applied according to Luther’s Disputation (theses 28), the latter evil of self-control is worse than the former sin of being offended since such offences serve to humble us (LHD theses 21).
What goes hand in metaphysical hand in all of this is good ole’ ancient spiritual caste tyranny. As Cox further observes,
Shortly after becoming pope, Gregory wrote Pastoral Care. In addition as pope, he reorganized the administration of the papal states, he maintained papal authority in the face of encroachments from the Patriarch of Constantinople, he established links with the Frankish Kingdoms, and most importantly (for these English writers), he sent a party of monks, led by Augustine, to convert the Anglo-Saxons.
Gregory was very influenced by the Rule of St. Benedict and Benedictine monks who came to Rome after the monastery that St. Benedict founded was burnt. In some letters, Gregory calls his work Pastoral Rule. “There is every reason to assume that Gregory in conceiving the plan for Liber Regulae Pastoralis [Pastoral Rule] intended to provide the secular clergy with a counterpart to this Regula [the Rule of St. Benedict].
….This culture of rulers and emperors also helps explain why Gregory saw Pastoral Care and Pastoral Rule as one in the same. By modern day standards, Gregory would be considered overly authoritarian.
A culture of “rulers and emperors” had precious little to do with it, but rather ancient spiritual caste systems that answered the supposed preordained call of God to control the totally depraved. With the sword if necessary. While many of these systems were based on mythology prior to the 6th century, Plato systematized the idea and gave it scientific dignity. But his trifold theory of soul consisting of king, soldier, and producer called for a sociological counterpart that was a mirror image to fit the need. Sir Karl Raimund Popper, considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, fingered Platonism as the primary catalyst for religious and secular tyranny in Western culture. And Plato’s mystic dualism (shadows and forms) added not just a little to the MO of the Reformers. According to church historian John Immel:
Calvin’s Institutes (1530) is the formal systematic institutionalization of Platonist/Augustinian syncretism that refined and conformed to Lutheran thinking and became the doctrinal blueprint for the Reformed Tradition [Blight in the Vineyard: Prestige Publishing 2011].
Christ promised us that He would build His Church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The idea that the Reformers rescued His church from the gates of the Roman Catholic Church is both laughable and the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. The idea that Christ needed, and continues to need the services of Plato’s philosopher kings is arrogance on steroids. Somewhere, God’s church moves forward. Let us shed the Reformed load that hinders and find our place in that true church.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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