Tuesday, November 11, 2008

"Recovery" of what gospel?

WHAT "GOSPEL" HAS BEEN
"RECOVERED" BY FLOUNDERS?

On his blog, Flounder Timmy Brister says:

"If there is one group of Baptists who have argued for a recovery and focus on the gospel, it is the Calvinists in the SBC."

When a Flounder such as Timmy talks about "recovery" of the gospel, he is in fact referring to the Hybrid Calvinist Flounders' version of the "doctrines of grace," including the heresy of "regeneration before faith" borrowed from the Pedobaptists.

I have, for better or for worse, been an eyewitness of this "movement" since the Flounders' version originally was hatched in the 1960s with Ernest Reisinger and the "Grace Conference" in Carlisle, Pennsylvania which I attended. If you follow the trail from that point on, you will see what type of "recovery" has been acomplished over the years. It is a virtual "trail of tears." There has been virtually no evangelism, no soul-winning, no churches established (except splits), no churches flourishing.

As Iain Murray has put it --

In the Preface of his 1995 book, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, Murray says:

>>
In the 1960s it seemed to many of us that Spurgeon's continuing significance had to do with his witness to the free-grace convictions of the Reformers and Puritans over against the shallow and non-doctrinal evangelicalism of our day. Thirty years later that witness remains relevant and yet it is apparent that the recovery of doctrinal Christianity is not necessarily our chief need today.

. . . it would appear that THE PRIORITY WHICH SOUL-WINNING HAD IN SPURGEON'S MINISTRY IS NOT COMMONLY SEEN TO BE OUR PRIORITY.

The revival of DOCTRINE has scarcely been matched by a revival of EVANGELISM.

While not accepting the tenets of Hyper-Calvinism it may well be that we have not been sufficiently alert to the danger of allowing a supposed consistency in doctrine to OVERRIDE THE BIBLICAL PRIORITY OF ZEAL FOR CHRIST AND SOULS OF MEN.

Doctrine without usefulness is no prize. As Spurgeon says, 'You may look down with contempt on some who do not know so much as you, and yet they may have twice your holiness and be doing more service to God.'
>>

"Arminianism" is not the Flounders' problem. They have little to nothing to fear from the likes of Steve Lemke, Jerry Vines, Johnny Hunt, Malcolm Yarnell, the John 3:16 Conference or any other "Arminian" or "Non-Calvinist." What they should realize is that the Hybrid Calvinist camp can say --

"We have met the enemy and it is US."

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