Moving On As a Contemporary Child of God; All Those Who Do So Have Their Own Blessed Broken Road
“The Protestant teachers proudly proclaim themselves as bad people and even laugh about it, but yet the simplicity of cause and effect somehow escapes us.”
“In all cases, orthodoxy is the knowledge handed down to the spiritual peasants to inform them on how to be progressively saved by the institution.”
“…in the final judgment followers will stand alone before God.”
Recently, the host and domain address for eldersresolution.org came up for renewal. With everything I have going on with TANC Ministries the due date slipped between the cracks and the site is temporarily down although there are other extensions of the site online (clearcreekchapel.com).
Looking through the information that the site documents was a defining moment and one of deep reflection. I decided to renew the domain address and move it to another site that I will develop sometime in the near future. Perhaps this very post will be the centerpiece.
Before I move on to the primary ideas of this post, let me say that eldersresolution.org, which can now be found in pdf format at http://clearcreekchapeleldersresolution.weebly.com/ was the work of my son-in-law, Pastor David Ingram, and pioneered the concept of using websites to hold the institutional church accountable in a public way. He came up with the idea as a way to take a stand in my situation (circa 2008), and to my knowledge there were no such sites on the internet at that time. It would seem that the Bangladesh missionary kids (https://bangladeshmksspeak.wordpress.com/) were also innovators in regard to the concept early on. In 2009, the concept went viral in response to the heavy-handed leadership mode of the New Calvinist movement which had finally come of age after 39 years of covert growth; what many called the “Quite Revolution” (http://founders.org/library/quiet/).
Reviewing the information made me cringe as it revisited what a weak and confused person I was at the time. With that said, it was also a major turning point in my life that I find impossible to regret. How many times did I dismiss the numerous and serious problems I saw in the church with, “What else is there?” For 27 years I struggled to find relevance in the church.
The turning point was the New Calvinist movement, and specifically the New Calvinists that covertly obtained control of Clearcreek Chapel (Springboro, Ohio). I had been a member there for 20-years-plus and a former elder. As these leaders began transforming Clearcreek from Reformation Light to Reformation Lager, I wondered if I had finally stumbled upon the answers to why Protestant sanctification is so anemic, illogical, and irrelevant.
Like the Protestant leaders I had rubbed shoulders with in the past, they couldn’t answer the hard questions, but this time I really pressed the issue because they were just adding more confusion to the confusion I had found a way to live with. That was troubling to me. Then, when they started responding to my persistence with passive forms of aggression, and later not so passive, I figured I was on to something.
Funny, one question I kept asking publically in Sunday school seemed to be the lightning rod: “How do we know when we are trying to please God ‘in our own efforts’ and what exactly does that mean to begin with? How should we do effort?” It was very obvious to the congregation that they didn’t want to answer the question, but I kept pushing the issue and that’s when all of the trouble started. It would seem that in my search for Protestant relevance, I had finally found the right question. If Christians are to rightly partake in a right effort versus a wrong effort, how is that determined?*
And of course, now I know why they didn’t want to answer the question. Protestantism teaches that sanctification is a “Sabbath rest” in which we “rest in what Jesus has done—not anything we do.” This is what Protestant Light formally criticized as let go and let God theology. But of course in the scheme of things, the folly of this construct is fully realized: not doing things is a metaphysical impossibility; so, what we are talking about is two different types of works. That would be, not working work and working work. Or if you may, faith alone works and work work.
This boils down to Protestant orthodoxy classifying works according to the traditions of men. They determine what faith alone works are as opposed to works that are “self-justifying.” It boils down to the following: obedience to their definitions determine your salvation. Non-self-justifying works pertain to Protestant ritual that keeps you saved. And of course, the sacrament of tithing keeps the money pouring in for infrastructure that bolsters the aurora of authority. What will people pay for their eternal salvation? Observe the splendor of Protestant temples and institutions that pollute the landscape everywhere.
Eldersresolution.org is merely a documenting of the symptoms. The domain will always be there, but I am not really sure why it is a good idea. It was originally constructed to warn others about the Clearcreek Chapel elders who had supposedly distorted Protestant orthodoxy and done really bad things to other people. What I know now is that Protestantism itself is the bad thing. Bad things happen in church because church is bad. In fact, one of the premier leaders of the present-day Protestant church, Dr. John Piper, brags about being bad (https://youtu.be/6-GxkAJ1OBU). The Protestant teachers proudly proclaim themselves as bad people and even laugh about it, but yet the simplicity of cause and effect somehow escapes us.**
Other mediators other than Christ necessarily demand institutional salvation based on what is supposedly God’s authority by proxy. This is why the body of Christ is a literal family and NOT an institution in any way, shape, or form. It is a literal family that one is literally born into by the baptism of the Spirit otherwise known as being “born again.” It is the literal “household of God” and the family of God the Father—not an institution any more than any family is an institution. Christ’s mandate to His assemblies is to be carried out through a family format—the literal family of God. Any vestige of institutionalism will cripple the cause of Christ to the degree that it exists within the assemblies of Christ expressed where families dwell: in homes, not institutional purpose buildings.
ALL institutional churches and religions have these things in common: mediators other than Christ or mediators in addition to Christ. There is a claim of authority other than Christ or a shared authority with Christ, and finally, there is always a gnosis caste system; the haves and have-nots in regard to the ability to know truth owned by the institution. In all cases, orthodoxy is the knowledge handed down to the spiritual peasants to inform them on how to be progressively saved by the institution.
False religion is always a broken road, but unfortunately, the pain of that road will rarely lead people to other places. But when it does, the pain of that road becomes an irrelevant and distant concern. It is a pain that is finished and its purpose completed. It is swallowed up by the experience of where the road has taken you. The story of your broken road will rarely warn others of danger or save anyone; people will forgive or look the other way in many, many things in order to gain eternal life. In the minds of the “good Germans” during WWII Germany was not perfect, but what else was there? In their minds; nothing.
In the mind of a good Protestant or Catholic what else is there? Nothing. It may be a nasty bus, but it’s the only bus going to heaven because the authority of men says so. But in the final judgment followers will stand alone before God.
And so it is. The broken road has led me to a place that makes its potholes and highway robbers a distant and irrelevant memory. Their work is finished. When experience teaches you a new way, and you begin to live in that new way, that’s healing.
Staying on the broken road and revisiting its experiences will never heal. Never. When pain is a finished work…you are healed. It is little different than Christ’s obedience to the cross which He despised and bore for the joy that was set ahead.
It is finished.
paul
*Chad Bresson, an elder at Clearcreek Chapel once prayed before the congregation: “Lord, we know that we have tried to please you in our own efforts this week, please forgive us.”
**The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, stated in a letter to Philip Melanchthon: “If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.”
What God Does in Protestant Progressive Justification
Originally published May 31, 2015
There was a meme in my Facebook news feed that caught my eye this morning. I felt compelled to make some corrections to it. If you still don’t believe that Protestantism teaches progressive justification, think again.
Andy
Galatians 5:22,23; Those Under Law Cannot Understand Love
A good way to lend more understanding to the New Testament is to study present-day Calvinism. All in all, Calvinism, especially Neo-Calvinism, is identical to the Gnosticism that wreaked havoc on the first-century assemblies.
If you are a Protestant and a Calvinist in particular, your love is anemic at best because there is a law against your love. What is that law? Perfection. See, since your love is imperfect because you are mortal; your love is illegitimate. So, why bother when it gets right down to it?
The love you practice in this material world is a mere shadow of the perfect form of love in the spiritual realm; this is/was the Neo-Platonism of the first century known as Gnosticism. Like in our day regarding evangelicalism, this philosophy had completely taken over the Jewish religious culture during the time that Christ and His apostles ministered. In fact, Gnosticism is really the root ideology of evangelicalism.
This is behind Paul’s statement in Galatians, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
I was reminded of this during a discourse I had recently with a Calvinist on Facebook. I brought up a few of many Bible passages that completely dismantle the foundations of Protestant soteriology; specifically, those that state the following: love fulfills the whole law. Calvinists are quick to bring up passages stating that one violation of law violates the whole law as Calvin does in 3.14.10 of his Institutes, but then disregard passages that state the contrast. And that’s what the Bible does deliberately; it states two contrasts to make a point about being under law versus being under grace.
Since Calvinism’s view of man is fundamentally Gnostic, and man is of the material realm, there can be no good in man or of man, and certainly no man can do a good work. So, supposedly, according to Calvinism, God uses the “righteous demands of the law for perfect law-keeping” to make this point. Therefore, there is a law against OUR love because our love is imperfect; only Jesus’ love fulfills the law because His love is perfect.
So, in regard to where the Bible states that “OUR” love fulfills the law; the following argument is waged: that’s really talking about Jesus’s substitutionary law-keeping applied to sanctification by faith alone in the same gospel that saved us, or “living by the gospel.” We can’t really love; the law is against our love because we can’t keep it perfectly. But in contrast, Paul states that there is NO law against love or any other fruit of the Spirit. And another point needs to be made here; in the Bible, “perfection” usually refers to “maturity” and not perfect law-keeping to begin with. This is just another example of the Reformed plenary redefinition of biblical words, terms, and concepts.
It’s interesting; when I cited the Bible to make my case for the law being fulfilled by us through love, the following discourse ensued:
Now, if you read all of Galatians 5, this Facebook discourse fits the context of the argument to a “T.” In context, “circumcision” may represent the law. The Judaizes relaxed applicable law-keeping as love because their rituals fulfilled the “righteous demands of the law” not love. Paul not only mentions circumcision, but the recognition of days etc. elsewhere. This is why Paul states,
“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”
This is absolutely no different than Protestantism which forgoes obedient love through some ritual that fulfills the law instead of the “believer.” Paul says, NO, the individual is culpable for obeying the whole law IF one is justified by it. For the Judaizes, it was circumcision and the recognition of days etc.; for Protestants it is returning to the same gospel that saved you perpetually in order for the obedience of Jesus to fulfill the law, but that is still…“you who would be justified by the law.” Who keeps it is not the point. And whatever the system, it ALWAYS leads to the same results:
“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.”
Look, if the standard for love is perfect law-keeping, how obvious is it that the prescribed ritual is going to replace the work of obedient love leading to a living by the flesh, viz, obeying the desires of sin which resides in mortality? This is Paul’s entire point in Galatians 5. This issue effectively explains every foul testimony taking place in the Protestant institutional church; it has merely replaced justification by the law via Judaism with “preaching the gospel to ourselves every day” so Jesus’ love will stand in for us and keep us saved via the law. It’s absolutely NO different. But who is to do the loving? Who is to do the obeying? Answer:
“You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?”
What must take place instead of the fulfillment of the law through ritual? Paul explains:
“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
That’s the baptism of the Spirit. That’s the death of the old you that is no longer under the law. You may coincide that with this…
As Protestants, former Protestants, and recovering Protestants, this is difficult to get our minds around because of what has been drilled into our heads for almost 600 years, but it is really just another form of good old fashioned justification by the law. This is why the Protestant is confused by Hebrews 11 which explains obedient love versus justification by perfect law-keeping.
paul
Protestantism and ISIS Light
A light version of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria would probably gain little more acceptance than ISIS Lager among most people. Of course, Protestants get a total pass on who they really are while preventing such a pass for other religions. I will give you a thousand bucks for every time you have heard a Protestant say, “Well, not every Buddhist believes what Buddha believed—the fact that he/she is a Buddhist should not automatically disqualify him/her for church membership.” Ya, right. Trust me, I will not be paying.
True, one reason Protestants get a pass on who they really are is because most Protestants don’t even know what a Protestant is. Many people understand Protestantism based on what Protestants tell them which is really, really bad information. In fact, Protestant icons like John MacArthur Jr. don’t even know what a Protestant is. Those of the present-day Neo-Protestant resurgence identify themselves by picking and choosing their identity selectively from Reformation orthodoxy. Yes, yes, the hallowed documents of Reformed orthodoxy; yet, they pick and choose what they want from these documents and pretend the rest is not there. It’s selective proof texting of doctrine and the rewriting of church history.
But when it gets right down to it, tyranny is tyranny. Collectivism is collectivism. And, zero sum life is zero sum life. Indeed, many, many parallels can be drawn between ISIS and Protestantism, but this post is about one. Let’s talk about child brides, arranged marriages, and the idea that the patriarch of a family, viz, the father, retains authority over the children indefinitely based on the 5th commandment, “Honor your father and Mother.” But of course, per everyday Protestantism, “honor” really means “obey daddy.” Right. In all cases, Webster’s Dictionary is only correct if your local Reformed elder says it is. Always vet the meaning of words with your Reformed philosopher king lest you be brought down to hell.
Here are the facts: the Puritans and all of their wacky superstitions, those of the Patriarchy movement, and many more tyrannical groups, are all part of the Reformed tradition and in most cases good ole’ fashioned Calvinists. One stands dumbfounded in considering how the evangelical industrial complex gets away with picking and choosing how they want to be identified from the same body of Mein Kompf-like documents. Certainly this gargantuan scam depends on the fact that most Protestants have never read the founding documents of the Reformation. Certainly, most Calvinists have never read the Calvin Institutes. And likewise, most Germans never read Mein Kompf. I have continually challenged notable Calvinists to come on our radio program and simply comment on readings from the Calvin Institutes. They won’t do it because they know what is in there is a huuuuge problem, or else they know they have never read it while proclaiming to be an authority on Calvinism which speaks to a dilemma that needs little explanation.
So let’s discuss ISIS stuff like child brides and arranged marriages, and patriarchal authority over emancipated children; also Protestant stuff.
A Christian retreat for Quiverfull fathers to marry off their teen daughters has been cancelled after Raw Story readers expressed concerns that the event constitutes human trafficking and contacted the Salvation Army which owns the campground where that retreat was scheduled to be held in Wichita.
Quiverfull patriarch, Vaughn Ohlman, organized a “Get Them Married” retreat for the purpose of providing a weekend where ultra-conservative Christian fathers could network with like-minded families “(and their unmarried young men and women) who are committed to young, fruitful marriage and to help them overcome the barriers which have kept their children unmarried.”
The Raw Story article sparked outrage among readers and many were moved to action, demanding that authorities be notified in order to protect the children who were slated to be married off young for the purpose of procreating lots of babies for Jesus.
Readers discovered that Camp Hiawatha, where the retreat was planned to be held, is owned by the Salvation Army. I contacted a good friend who is a officer at the Salvation Army’s training school in Chicago, and she responded right away to let me know the Wichita corps has already denied access to Ohlman’s group for what would have amounted to a child trafficking “retreat.”
The Salvation Army responded by denying access to the group which is linked to the Duggar cartel. Also, the Quiverfull group has since cancelled the “retreat.” What is interesting is the group’s defense for what they believe right out of the Calvin Institutes. If you go to their website, and this page here, you find an exhaustive argument for their positions, particularly authority over emancipated children, from the writings of John Calvin and other Reformers.
Just saying, the Patriarchy movement is predominantly Reformed and Calvinistic, but mainline Protestants can distance themselves by labeling fruit from the same tree, “ultra conservative.” Listen, the idea that Protestant denominationalism is divisive is a misconception; it actually puts Protestantism in a position of plausible deniability that prevents them from being accountable for anything. The tree can keep growing bigger and bigger while evil fruit is deemed as, “secondary issues.” While the fundamental principles of tyranny march forward, cover is provided for its unlimited evil fruit via “secondary issues” nomenclature. Protestant temples teach whatever serves to control the parishioners while answering objections via “Well, not all of the elders agree on that point.”
Again, everything other-than Protestant is not afforded the same standard by any stretch of the imagination. Mainline Protestant icons can support any group that shares their Reformed goal of ruling over the whole world while claiming denominational differences when such groups get caught with both hands in the cookie jar.
This is why Protestantism gets a pass on everything while bemoaning the unfortunate reality of denominationalism which is wholly disingenuous complaint. In this case (and Protestantism has the market cornered on this), every tree is known by its fruit except Protestantism. Yet, its uncanny similarities to other groups who share the same principles of tyranny are undeniable.
That’s because all come from the same tree with roots grounded in social caste and the authority of men rather than truth.
paul
Protestantism and “Good Germans” | It’s ALL About AUTHORITY
The biannual Neo-Protestant T4G conference was bigger than ever this year. Captivating was images of thousands of pastors walking past the SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) protestors with visible indifference. Snap is performing its service in Protestant circles now as child rape is no longer exclusively Catholic.
All in all, whether Protestant or Catholic, the powers that be need only to wait until the protests die—they know it will all pass and business as usual will return. Why? Because they understand the authority issue. They understand that when it is all said and done, Catholics and Protestants alike are “good Germans.” The Urban Dictionary defines the term this way: “A citizen of Nazi Germany who participated in or overlooked atrocities while denying personal moral responsibility by appeal to his submission to supposedly legitimate authority.”
In a recent dialogue with a young man who was once mentored by Susan and me, he explained his conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism this way: Catholicism was first and long before Protestantism. The Church began in Rome. It’s a matter of authority. If everyone would submit to the true church, there wouldn’t be all of these denominations spawned by the Reformation. Obviously, it is massive disunity. Of course the Church is not perfect, but it is anointed by God.
By the way, those in the Protestant church we were a member of set out to save this young man from our “dangerous teachings.” Now they are beside themselves that he has converted to Catholicism which is actually closer to the truth than Protestantism when it gets right down to it; at least the Thomist aspect of Catholicism.
And let us not forget, both are predicated on perpetual resalvation (progressive justification) that can only be found in an institutional church. Church, whether Protestant or Catholic, is moneyed-up because they are in the salvation business. What will people pay for their eternal salvation? Everything they have. Look around; nothing is more obvious. Money is invested in infrastructure (not people) because infrastructure invokes and speaks to what? Right, AUTHORITY. This explains everything going on in the church.
Sure, many Germans disagreed with the genocide, but where would the world be without Germany? They were in Germany and under the total control of the Nazis; what choice did they have? Sure, no one agrees with child rape, but where would we obtain our salvation apart from the Church? And after all, there is no perfect church and we are all just…”sinners saved by Grace.” If the Church’s dirty laundry is displayed to the world, they will be dissuaded from the Church and subsequent salvation. We can’t have that.
This is why, for example, the outrageous ABWE scandal is now forgotten history and it is business as usual in the GARB churches. A pity what happened, but the source of salvation must not be cut off because of a sinful few that got caught. This was plainly stated numerous times when the scandal was getting press.
The problem with the Bible follows: its simplicity escapes us. When Christ said that “ALL” authority in heaven and EARTH has been given to Him and only Him—that’s exactly what He meant. No matter how many times the apostles stated that there is only ONE mediator between God and man, we just don’t seem to get it.
But you can be sure of this: ALL good Germans will be held accountable. Read some history; the plight of the German people after WWII is excruciatingly painful to read.
But if that was from those who speak on earth, how much more from Him who speaks from heaven?
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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