Reflection on the “Chameleon” Post
Ages ago, as a blogger rookie, this was one of my first posts. I wrote mostly about symptoms back then, and would like to add an addendum to the end that answers the “why?” question in regard to what I have perceived for years in the institutional church…
[Begin transcript]
Wikipedia has this definition of the Chameleon Lizard: “All chameleon species are able to change their skin colors. Different chameleon species are able to change different colors which can include pink, blue, red, orange, green, black, brown, yellow and turquoise. Recent research indicates that they do not typically change their color for reasons of camouflage, but instead use color changes as a method of communication, including making themselves more attractive to potential mates.”
Over the years, I have observed the “Chameleon Christian,” and like the lizard, they seem to be the most common form of Christian species these days, as Wikipedia later states concerning the Chameleon. Also like the lizard, they change colors to communicate favorably and appear attractive. To be more specific, they follow whatever teaching happens to be in front of them at the time. This is a phenomenon that has always been hard for me to comprehend, but no less true. You put John MacAuthor in their church one day, they will follow him. Put Joel Osteen in there the next day, they will follow him and adapt accordingly. Compare this to what Scripture says about the Christians at Berea: “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily {to see} whether these things were so.”
The Bereans wouldn’t even give the Apostle Paul a pass on what he taught. So what are you? Are you a Chameleon Christian, or a Berean?
[End transcript]
I see now that the reason for this is simple; it matters little about the truth within the institutional church, salvation comes by being faithful to the institution itself. In many cases, new leadership will posit doctrine that turns what prior leaders took 20 years to establish completely upside down. Nevertheless, people will remain faithful to that particular church without a whimper. Why?
Because it’s the institution that saves, not the truth taught within the institution.
paul
Prep For Gnostic Watch Weekly: Friday 11/14/2014
What does the recent Obama Care scandal have to do with Gnosticism and the institutional church? Everything.
Show Prep:
Mark Driscoll Did NOT Resign Because He Abused Parishioners
Mark Driscoll
Sigh. Does anybody have any idea how many “Lessons Learned from Mark Driscoll’s Resignation” posts have been written? How do you write a post on that when the fundamental premise is dead wrong?
Mark Driscoll did not have to step down because he abused people. That was the excuse to get rid of him, but not the reason. We will probably never know what he really did to turn the other institutional church power brokers against him, but it had absolutely NOTHING to do with abusing people.
Abuse in the institutional church is rampant and completely condoned. James MacDonald, a friend of Driscoll’s, is guilty of the EXACT same behavior, actually worse; so, why is he still around? Because he plays well with the power brokers—that’s why. I am incredulous that anyone would believe that he was forced out of ministry for mistreating parishioners. That’s a laugher.
Let’s take Clearcreek Chapel of Springboro, Ohio for instance. The elder board there has a long history of abuse. Former members have fled the state of Ohio to get as far away from that church as possible, literally east coast and west coast, while others have sought psychiatric care after tangling with said elder board. This is an elder board that has a very long list of unresolved conflict with many, many Christians including myself.
Nevertheless, they have the full endorsement of the Reformed counseling community along with their own training center for counselors endorsed by the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. The director of John MacArthur’s counseling program at Master’s Seminary, Dr. John Street, will be speaking there in January 2015. And of course, few need to be brought up to speed on the continued endorsement of CJ Mahaney despite overt criminal behavior.
In regard to Driscoll, the institutional church power brokers took the opportunity to appear principled, but in reality Driscoll crossed some sort of inner circle code of conduct. Sometimes we can know the real reason, but in Driscoll’s case it is doubtful.
Rob Bell is a case where we can know. The inner circle kicked him to the curb for writing the book Love Wins. In the book, Bell proffered universal salvation. Ouch. You can do many, many naughty things as a New Calvinist celebrity, but you may never, never, never remove the fear factor from being a Protestant. Bell messed with the control/fear factor—that’s a no, no. That’s messing with the mutton bigtime.
However, Francis Chan did the same thing in a book he wrote that was supposedly an answer to Bell’s book, and got away with it though he was much more ambiguous about it. How? Chan has way more star power than Bell had, and only implied that we can’t know for certain what God means by the term “hell,” but it’s probably a bummer. At any rate, Chan’s book was far from a literal, grammatical statement on hell.
It’s all about politics and the power brokers of what many well respected Christian journalists call the “evangelical industrial complex” (or google “John Calvin’s Geneva Theocracy”). We live in America where the institutional church is not backed by the government; the only thing that the institutional church has to fall back on is salvation by institution, and that has been sold masterfully to God’s people and was a staple of the Reformation. The Protestant institutional church is clearly a corporate man-following popery.
No? With the demise of Driscoll, the Mars Hill empire with multiple campuses nationwide completely collapsed overnight. It’s completely gone. The ministry stood on the feet of the corporate pope and nothing else. This is exactly why James MacDonald is able to extort outrageous salary increases from his own campus empire. If he goes, the whole enchilada goes and everyone knows it. That’s also why MacDonald was able to excommunicate one of the campuses because the elders of that particular campus dared question him. Think about it, he declared every member of that campus unbelieving and condemned just because their elders had questions. MacDonald has also expressed the desire to have the authority to execute parishioners who disagree with him. Again, Driscoll could not even begin to hold a candle to MacDonald’s despotism.
There is one other possibility: Driscoll might have done something really stupid that will come out later, and the rats are jumping ship, but again, we will probably never know the real reason.
Perhaps everyone wants to believe that Driscoll was thrown under the bus because the first pope of New Calvinism, John Piper and the other power brokers really care about the spiritually abused, but it’s not reality by any stretch of the imagination.
paul
Plan Moving Forward
As some of you know, I have been in the process of writing The Truth About New Calvinism Volume 2. There are also other book projects running in the background for the future. One of them is a home fellowship manifesto of sorts. The theses follows:
- The assemblies of Christ were intended to be home fellowships and nothing else.
- Any professing Christian indwelt by the Spirit has the authority to baptize or serve the Lord’s Table.
- Home fellowships should be organized according to New Testament principles.
- Home fellowships should be totally disconnected from the institutional church.
- Home fellowships are individual centered—not group centered; in other words, the focus is on individual gifts.
- The institutional church is historically rooted in the false gospel of progressive justification. The very gospel of “church” is progressive justification and salvation by institution.
- Home fellowships are predicated on fellowship for a common purpose, not authority.
- Home fellowships are predicated on encouragement and leadership, not horizontal lordship.
In light of recent episodes in the ongoing institutional church megadrama, such as the infamous John Piper tweet, “If Jesus is not empathetic to your mistreatment, you don’t need to be. If he is, no one else needs to be. He will settle,” it has been suggested that this project running in the background be moved up to first priority, and I agree. More and more, the true colors of the institutional church are becoming evident:
If you want to have any chance at all of getting to heaven, keep your damn mouth shut, give your tithe, and know that without us you have no hope because you are clueless.
Therefore, instead of resuming my writing schedule for TTANC 2 on Monday, I will be delving into this project: AC Preveiw
This is not going to be a lengthy writing project as we have been stockpiling articles and information for this project for some time (It should be in print by December 2014).
What is important is that the book will set forth a powerful argument that will embolden Christians to free themselves from this institutional church dark age and live out their calling to the fullest.
Please be in prayer, and by all means give us your input.
paul
Sent by “Ghostwriter”: Recipe for a Hostile Takeover
Originally published June 28, 2013
Preamble: An anonymous person sent me the following satire of New Calvinist Ernest Reisinger’s article on how to take over a church covertly. Reisinger left the Earth in 2004. He was one of the forefathers of the present-day New Calvinist movement. I detail Reisinger’s departure from Presbyterian circles for the sole purpose of taking over the SBC with the Australian Forum’s doctrine in my fifteen-page addendum to The Truth About New Calvinism: Volume One (TANC Publishing 2011). Reisinger and his brother John were part of a small group of men associated with the Forum who believed that they had rediscovered the true Reformation gospel. And they were right. But key was the fact that they were also armed with the Forum’s brilliant systemization of the doctrine for contemporary consumption—a feat that has given New Calvinism its staying power.
This small group of men set the precedent and procedure for covert takeovers. The protocol was further articulated in Dan Southerland’s book, “Transitioning: Leading Your Church Through Change” (Zondervan 1999). Ghostwriter is a member of a church in America, which means that it is in the process of being taken over by New Calvinists or the takeover is complete; hence, good reason to remain anonymous because these guys will utterly ruin your life if you stand up to them. How? Well, for one, most American Christian wives just want to be a member of a church and enjoy the community of it without any controversy. It’s just the way Protestants have been programmed over the years. This is one of the points of exploitation, among many that are used. And unfortunately, a change of membership will more than likely find the same problem.
The only answer is to reject the New Calvinist premise altogether and come out from among them. Unfortunately, much more carnage will have to be displayed before that happens to any significant degree.
paul
Recipe for a Hostile Takeover
It’s the “Little Red Book” of hostile Reformed church takeover, publically available for all to see. (My italics are the satire, obviously)
“Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”
“whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
REFORMING A LOCAL CHURCH
STRENGTHEN THE THINGS THAT REMAIN
by Ernest C. Reisinger
Rev. 3:2
“Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die…”
Rev. 3:4
“Yet you have a few people…who have not soiled their clothing.”
Chapter III
SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE- ( i.e. an unsuspecting, biblically sound free-grace preaching Church in need of radical reform )
Some who read this pamphlet are in, or will be in a reforming (hostile takeover) situation. And each situation has some different obstacles to deal with. The size of the church and the staff will make some difference in the approach as will the kind of membership, (discerning Christians- avoid these churches like the plague, or ripe-for-harvest mindless troglodytes already under the influence of Nicolaitanism, seek these for takeover) the spiritual caliber of the leadership (see above). I wish we had some little pamphlet with ten rules to success (we don’t now but one is probably forthcoming, every other dictatorship on earth has a pamphlet like the little red book, etc), but it is not that simple. There are not ten rules to guarantee success. There are some principles, however, that will always be helpful and will save some shipwrecks .
1. Don’t try any reformation until you have earned some spiritual credibility with the church (Pretend you are what you aren’t, hide your true views from the search committee and the congregation until you have suckered them in, be sure to throw in an old-time revival/gospel meeting every now and then to woo the wary).
2. The first suggestion is study the biblical principle of accommodation. There is a little pamphlet on this subject (The Principle of Biblical Accommodation as Applied to the Invitation System), (shows you how to pretend to be a free-grace preacher until you have your hand-picked elders and a quarter of the congregants under your sway) and an excellent message on tape by Thomas K. Ascol. This is available through The Christian Gospel Foundation, 521 Wildwood Parkway, Cape Coral, FL 33904, or Pastor Thomas K. Ascol, Grace Baptist Church, 204 SW 11th Place, Cape Coral, FL 33991.
3. Three questions should be asked, and carefully answered:
a) What is the right, biblical thing to do?
b) How should these changes be implemented?
c) When should they be implemented? Don’t try to do too much too soon. Many mistakes have been made by doing the right thing in the wrong way or at the wrong time (because even ignorant congregants were able to quickly see through the cloak.
4, The principle of priorities must be applied. You can’t change everything at once–first things first (go slow, it will take time to deceive).
5. The principle of two churches must be before us at all times.
a) The church as it should be, conceived from the scriptures (actually the Calvin Institutes, Westminster, various Baptist confessions of faith), in idealism–never abandon this.
b) The church as it is–the one you look at 11:00 on Sunday morning (you know, the one that has real people with real Scriptural beliefs in it?). One must realize that the two shall never meet on earth, but you will find joy and satisfaction in narrowing (weeding out the Arminian Free Grace miscreants) the difference between them, that is, when you see the one you look at on Sunday morning make some steps toward the (Calvinist) ideal one.
6. The principle of church membership. Don’t make church membership any narrower than the New Testament (suck in as many poor saps as you can before you uncork the bottle).
7. The principle of restraint. Don’t tackle the whole church at one time (this will never work for reasons stated above). Choose a few men who are sincere, teachable (unwary, biblically unlearned, unwilling to engage brains in coherent thought, nice guys but mindless) and spiritually minded (religious but not holding to any solid beliefs except that somehow Christ died for them) and spend time with them (indoctrinating them in your intellectually superior beliefs ) in study and prayer. They will help you to reform (because they don’t know any better). This principle is found in Titus 1:5: “For this cause left I thee behind in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee.” Acts 14:23: “And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.” Acts 1 1:30: “Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.” Acts 20:17,28: “And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.” Don’t get bogged down with what you call these men until they are trained (indoctrinated)–they are called overseers–elders (putty in your hands, yes-men).
8. Don’t get hung up on secondary matters (like preaching the Gospel, helping the poor, widows in the congregation).
9. Don’t use theological language that is not in the Bible, in the pulpit, such as, Calvinism, reformed, doctrines of grace, particular redemption etc. (duh, these aren’t in the Bible for a reason, moron. We are trying to take over a church here, not preach the truth). Most people will not know what you are talking about (because it is not found in the Bible and any discerning Christian will throw you out on your ear if they hear these terms, indoctrinate them slowly with simplistic language).
10. Use sound literature, not indiscriminately, but wisely. Little things at first, that is, pamphlets and books with some doctrinal and experimental substance (written by John Piper, RC Sproul, perhaps Jonathan Edwards… Those first two are the most important).
11. Don’t use the pulpit to scold people. You cannot scold people into reformation (you can only trick them into reformation).
12. Exercise common sense (see above. Don’t be an impatient idiot and get yourself canned).
13. Depend on the only weapons we have: prayer, preaching and teaching (wielding the newfound power of your inner circle of yes-men).
14. Be sure that you understand the foundational doctrines and how they are related to each other and to your situation (you freakin well better have completely aced the TULIP test).
15. I would suggest that you check the history of your church in respect to early constitutions or declarations of faith. Often you will find, particularly, in older churches, a statement expressing the doctrines which you desire to establish (in other words a Church that has already tried reform theology but it blew up in their face, don’t worry, our new brand will work). A gracious appeal to this document will help to give you credibility, at least they will know that you are not coming from Mars (just from infiltrated seminaries completely out of touch with reality and the laity and completely under the influence of the doctrines of men). Hide behind these articles of faith (I can’t even think of anything sarcastic to say to this, can’t believe it is so blatant). Hide behind our Baptist fathers, such as Bunyan, Spurgeon, Fuller, Boyce, Dagg, Broadus, Manly, W. B. Johnson, R. B. C. Howell and B. H. Carroll (because they will love you if you quote their founding fathers until you are ready to reveal your true colors).
Most of these suggestions come from experience, and, she is a queer old teacher. She first gives you the test and then the lesson. Unlike other teaching (which relies on Scripture to give the lesson).
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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