Calvinist Flyswatter

Of "divides" and "wedges"

OF "DIVIDES" AND "WEDGES"
AND THE FLOUNDERS

There are a couple of very interesting items on a couple of blogs posted today:

An Imaginery Divide by Wes Kenney

Words Creating Wedges by Peter Lumpkins

These items discuss the current comedic production of the "Tom & Tim Show from Floundersworld USA."

The most comedic of comedy is the type that is "taken seriously" by their creators, and this is the "normal" essence of the "Tom & Tim Show" which features Tom Ascol and Timmy Brister.

Tom is the successor of the late Ernest Reisinger who founded the "Founders Ministries," otherwise referred to on the Flyswatter blog as the Flounders.

Ernest Reisinger created the ecclesiastical DNA of the Flounders in the early 1980s when he launched this parasitical Hybrid Calvinist movement as a "reform" endeavor to make Reformed Hybrid Calvinists, or Bapbyterians, out of as many Southern Baptists as he could. Reisinger saw two elements in the SBC -- (1) his own movement and (2) the "other perspectives" -- a scenario which he describes as follows:

"Southern Baptists are at a crossroads. We have a choice to make. The choice is between the deep-rooted, God-centered theology of evangelical Calvinism and the man-centered, unstable theology of the other perspectives present in the convention" (A Quiet Revolution, page 13).

Ever since the founding of the Flounders, it has been a proselytizing movement, seeking to make Reformed Hybrid Calvinist Bapbyterians of Southern Baptist pastors, members, and churches. To my knowledge, the Flounders have never planted a new church except those started by proselytes who came from the "other perspective" sources. Their "purpose" has never been to evangelize, win lost souls, and baptize new converts, according to the commission of the Lord in Matthew 28:19, 20.

Their "purpose" was (and is) stated on their website as being "reformation" and this "reformation" focuses upon the Flounders' version of the "Doctrines of Grace" -- which being interpreted is non-creedal Reformed Hybrid Calvinism of the Pedobaptist Presbyterian variety.

This hybrid species was developed and perpetrated by post-17th century theologians who, incidentally, believed that their babies were "regenerated" in infancy and that adults get "born before faith," often described as "regeneration precedes faith" and the "ordo salutis." From the outset, the Flounders have promoted this Hybrid Calvinism primarily by means of literature, especially that which is produced by the staunch Pedobaptist Iain Murray and the Banner of Truth Trust of Great Britain.

The Flounders' "reformation" movement bears a remarkable resemblance to at least the early Campbellite "reformation" led by Scottish Presbyterians Thomas and Alexander Campbell in the 1800s. The Campbells came to America and were from a Presbyterian background, as was Ernest Reisinger who was Presbyterian before he became a Baptist. Both movements began as parasitical in nature, seeking followers who were associated with "other perspectives." Both claimed to be seeking the "recovery" of the Gospel and the "reformation" of the church, and both were adherents of the "regulative principle" of Presbyterianism, or the "command, example, inference" hermeneutical approach.

When the Campbellites were finally disfellowshipped by the Baptists in the 1800s and thereafter did not have much fertile ecclesiastical ground in which to sow discord and proselytize followers from Baptist churches, they eventually formed their own sect distinct from the Baptists. The Flounders, as a probability, will eventually do the same thing once Southern Baptists in general have become wise to the Flounders' designs.

Read the articles in the links given above, and you will have another example of how the Flounders seek to "divide and proselytize."

[COMMENTS: Send your comments to: pilgrimpub@aol.com]

posted by Bob L. Ross @ 3:07 PM