Fire

After the PCA adopted the Ad Interim Committee’s report on the Federal Vision, I remember reading this post, “Of Wolves, Wildfires, and Combat: What Members Can Do To Encourage Their Ministers,” by Dr. R. Scott Clark on The Heidelblog:

Members, in the Federal Vision our congregations face wolves and wildfires. The FV spreads like a wildfire. It is blown by the wind and devours all it touches.

This witness is true. As I write a pack of CREC wolves meets here in Moscow for their third Triennial Church Council of the Most Holy Confederate Presbytery of Saint Anselm. Or something like that. And as I write wild fires rage out of control in Southern California, burning everything to the ground in their paths. The blazes are so huge and propelled by such fierce winds that firemen look like children holding garden hoses as the put their lives on the line to extinguish the flames.

Think of your home, with all of your possessions that you collected over a lifetime — including those items dear to your children — and tell yourself you have less than an hour to get out. What would you grab? How would you pack it? Why this article and not that one? Then tell yourself that in three hours the fire will reduce your home to ashes and you will have to find new living arrangements when the day is over: first temporary living, then permanent. Hopefully you have insurance. But insurance or not, you have lost everything in minutes, and there’s nothing anyone could do except run. Now magnify your loss by thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. How do you quantify tragedy of this magnitude?

Natural disasters are terrifying events, and in Southern Cal this is the “shake and bake” season. But at least one of these fires is manmade — i.e., arson. Someone deliberately set a fire, in the Santa Ana winds, intending it to destroy something (we don’t know if the arsonist had entire neighborhoods in mind), which brings us back to the Federal Vision.

The Federal Visionists are bad men with bad intentions. They are theological arsonists. When they see a church animated by lively faith, they want to hijack it to the Federal Vision and ultimately to the CREC. If it opposes, they will try to split it. When they see an upright minister of the gospel, they want to corrupt him with perverse doctrine. And if he opposes them, they put fire to his reputation with innuendo or abusive ad hominems.

These are lawless men who know no authority but their own, which they centralized in one man. Confessions, creeds, and constitutions are documents without meaning to them. They have no concept of submission, unless you submit to them. They ransack decency and order to impose FV on peace and purity. They have defied the courts (or “councils” to use their parlance) of seven Reformed denominations, because they are the men and wisdom will die with them. They are self-willed reprobates who revel in chaos and they are determined to wreak havoc in the Church of God. These men don’t even possess the virtue of honor among thieves, if there is such a thing. Don’t forget what Wilson did to Sandlin’s church and how the CREC covenant breakers sanctioned his wicked, subversive conduct.

So, now that the Federal Visionists have refused correction and hardened themselves against the truth, what should the Church do with them? Now that we know they intend to pillage the household of God, if not burn it down, what is the next step?

Reject them. Put them out. Isolate them. Drive them into the Federal Vision’s natural habitat — the CREC — and let it continue in its cultic agenda. But fence the Church from them and warn the flock against them. Protect the house of faith from these arsonists; let them not come near. Indeed, leave them alone and let them prepare themselves for eternity, for God has prepared a special place for them — He calls it the Lake of Fire.

Finally, pray for the poor souls burnt by Federal Vision and the homeless souls in California. These are awful tragedies.