J have some bad news for Entryists, Social Justice Petunias, and narcissists in general. It is not about you. It is about covenant and promises. The words of God do not fall lightly.
Life is not fair, if you think fairness is getting the same outcome, and the same fate. Better said, life is just. The consequences of our actions live on.
God has not changed. He remains in a covenant relationship with Israel. And he awaits the day that the tribe says that blessed is Christ, who has come and will come.
And become part of the bride of Christ, which is his church. If he is jealous for his people, he is twice s jealous of his church.
For the church does have the keys to the kingdom of God, and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it. That does not mean that they will not try.
For some years my grandfather lived with us, and while he did not know of his son’s conversion—it would have been too awful a thing to stand between them—my grandfather was aware that, because of the conditions of my parents’ Catholic marriage, I was being educated by the Jesuits. In spite, or more likely because of this, my grandfather did his best to catechize me in the reformed confession and to educate me in the great contribution of the Kirk to the development of Scotland in the modern period.
I am grateful for his tutoring and I retain respect for the good done for my country (and through its missionaries for other places also) by the Church of Scotland, and for the high educational standard and rigour long associated with the Presbyterian ministry. I am afraid, however, that these good works are increasingly part of the past. The reality is that the Kirk has lost its way, lost its confidence and largely lost its faith. I fear it is finished as a significant force in Scottish society and is visibly dying.
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Nowhere in the message or in the supporting material is there any mention of God, creation, revelation, scripture, covenant, sin, redemptive sacrifice, atonement, sacraments, repentance, salvation, death, heaven or hell—only of “the issues which, if we address them together, will help to make Scotland a fairer, more equal and more just nation in a fairer, more equal and more just world.” The latter stands rather, as once a passage of scripture did, as the text for sermons and homilies. It begins “Scotland is changing” and in the accompanying material “Imagine Scotland in 2035—it is a fairer, more equal and more just place. . . .” Whether it will be I have no idea, though I suspect, as with the claim that the 20th and 21st centuries are ones of moral progress, it forgets the recurrent facts of human folly and wickedness; facts which for the Christian have a clear and compelling explanation: sin.
What happened is that the heretics took over the committees and drove our the faithful. Into alternatives: the Free Church in Scotland, from the Uniting Church into the Presbyterian Church in Canada and Australia, and in NZ the same thing could still happen. I worship with the Presbyterians: but the very reformed Grace Presbyterian is at the local bowling club.
On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, “I saw in the night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse! He was standing among the myrtle trees in the glen, and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses. Then I said, ‘What are these, my lord?’ The angel who talked with me said to me, ‘I will show you what they are.’ So the man who was standing among the myrtle trees answered, ‘These are they whom the LORD has sent to patrol the earth.’ And they answered the angel of the LORD who was standing among the myrtle trees, and said, ‘We have patrolled the earth, and behold, all the earth remains at rest.’ Then the angel of the LORD said, ‘O LORD of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?’ And the LORD answered gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked with me. So the angel who talked with me said to me, ‘Cry out, Thus says the LORD of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. Therefore, thus says the LORD, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it, declares the LORD of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Cry out again, Thus says the LORD of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity, and the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.’”
The old man’s gall must have been about to explode. That’s what orthodoxy does to heretics.
This moment of extreme bitching is truly the litmus test of what has been going on during this pathetic, chaotic, amateurish Synod: Pope tries again and again to break the walls of Catholicism, fails, and is angry. His reputation as “Great Innovator” is now clearly in tatters. He looks like a failure of Jimmy Carter proportions. He has nothing else to do now than keep trying to salvage what he can of his oh so loudly trumpeted revolutionary papacy.
Make no mistake, the man will make further attempts. In fact, I think the next great Heretical Offensive has already started. But this time, my impression is that the battle will not be about changing the rules – which the man is not able to (try to) do together with the bishops, and is not willing to (try to) do alone – but about trying to create an effeminate, emotional, unofficial “parallel church” that does not need to have the rules changed, because the “Spirit” of the rules allows to break them anyway.
We must stay vigilant. The man is Pope, and Popes are dangerous and powerful even when they are so astonishingly incompetent, and stupid to boot, like this one. But I am so glad the man is so obviously incompetent.
The war is raging on. But Francis got a second message that he is facing a rather difficult task. The bishops have run circles around him once again, and whilst they have not dared to openly denounce the heresy it appears heresy has found no ways in. The Evil Clown has to live with it, and finds it difficult.
The Presbyterians are an example for good and ill: for the same thing has happened to the Papists, and the Anglicans. The fraternal branches between the churches are strained. The entryists and liberals came in and tried to destroy them. They succeeded with the Methodists in my country, and have almost taken out the Anglicans and Catholics. The liberal leaven hid deep within the committees, and that led to the selection of theological innovators to teach in the schools of ministries, and the tolerance of error because inclusion.
And the laity left, for the truth was not within them.
In some places this was fought against. In Africa, the Liberals were rejected: the poor can smell bullshit and detest lies. It is the rich who are stupid.
In other places there were enough crunchy believers to push back and push the church against the narrative of the age. Who realized that they were staring at the pit, and there were no cookies in that dark place, but instead damnation. Who took their vows as elders seriously.
And have stepped back.
But Mundabor is correct. If you are a presbyterian or papist, the correct hermeneutic when considering the work of the committees of the church is suspicion. We are human, we are too easily deceived.
And we need to cling to the faith: to the work of Christ, to those ugly words such as condemnation, repentance and forgiveness. For there is succor for our souls.
Which the effete elite cannot provide.