[Vision2020] Where does he get this stuff?

[News of Christ Cult]

Monday, December 31, 2007  Where does he get this
stuff?<http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/2007/12/where-does-he-get-this-stuff.html>

A friend called the other day to ask if I was interested in pursuing the
scandal where Douglas Wilson and the Kirk elders used fraudulent documents
to "vindicate" Wilson from wrongdoing (Dr. Gier alluded to these two
incidents in his
post<http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/2007/12/heres-link.html>).
I replied, "We have enough documented scandal here to blog for an entire
year without invoking the phony minutes or the letter without signatures."
And that's not hyperbole.

For example, I just noticed that someone on the Warfield
list<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bbwarfield/message/26426>asked for
a church referral in Salt Lake City to which a brother recommended
Christ Presbyterian Church, OPC. Of course, Christ Presbyterian Church is
just one more assembly of Christians in a seeming endless parade of
believers who caught Wilson playing fast and loose with the Ninth
Commandment. This particular false witness involves the case reported in this
story<http://shaderenegade.blogspot.com/2002/04/presbytery-of-dakotas-takes-on-doug.html>by
*P&R News*. The letter was written by CPC's clerk of session in response to
falsehoods that Christ Church uploaded to the web.

May 27, 2003

The Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals
C/o Brett Baker, Moderator
P.O. Box 1158
Woodinville, WA 98072 1158

Dear Brothers:

Our attention was recently brought to the minutes of your 2002 meeting as
they appear on your website. In those minutes is a false report from Christ
Church, Moscow, concerning their controversy with Christ Presbyterian
Church, Salt Lake City, and, the Presbytery of the Dakotas (OPC). There are
several misrepresentations, but the most serious is that, "some time after
[Mr. Maneri] left, charges were brought against him in the OPC."

We have attached the text of the correspondence between our churches. As you
can see, we have repeatedly told the elders in Moscow that Mr. Maneri was
charged individually and before witnesses while a member and an elder. Mr.
Maneri had attended worship on the previous Sunday and was leading a meeting
of the pulpit committee when he was charged before witnesses. After being
charged, but before a trial could commence, Mr. Maneri resigned his office
and asked that his name be erased from the rolls of the church. The Book of
Church Order he vowed to receive does not allow a resignation to
automatically stop a discipline case. We went forward with a trial to
protect the church and in hope of restoring our brother.

When Mr. Maneri was publicly circulating advice from Doug Wilson not to
appear at his trial, we contacted Mr. Wilson and then his session. Our hope
was that their goals would be the same as ours. As you can see in the
attached correspondence, our complaints have been met with sophistry and
word games that should be an embarrassment for elders of a Church of Christ.
Our goals in all of this have been to shepherd the Church of Jesus Christ
and to restore a brother whom we love. We have continued to pray for him
with tears, even after his excommunication. It is our hope that despite the
interference of Mr. Wilson and the Moscow session that he will yet be
restored.

We ask that you read the attached correspondence and remember that no one on
our session had previously communicated with Mr. Wilson. A friend of Mr.
Wilson was accused of grave sin. Mr. Wilson made no attempt to determine the
facts of the case from us before advising him not to attend his trial. When
we challenged that advice, we were told that we would have to prove that we
had risen above the contemporary Reformed norm" before Mr. Wilson would
reconsider his advice. We do not accept that our discipline should be
presumed defective. It is up to Moscow to demonstrate its illegitimacy
before they counsel our members to reject it. We understand that at the
time, Moscow had the same provisions against unilateral resignation. How can
Doug Jones state in a recent letter to the Moscow church that "in the
covenant bond of membership, both sides are obligated to agree to severing
membership covenants," but then portray us as disciplining a "nonmember"?

We have been told that we have no standing to appeal to your court, but we
ask that you remove this false report from your website. We send this
directly to you, because you are perpetuating a false report. We do not
believe we can do anything more to prevent Moscow's misrepresentations, but
we ask that you not join them. We would be happy to detail the other errors,
if you would like. Though we have no official standing before you, we do
implore you as Christian brothers to deal with the larger situation. We do
not believe that you would want us treating your churches as Doug Wilson and
the Moscow session have treated us.

Sincerely

Lou LaBriola, Clerk of Session


And on this fully documented note of yet more fœdero-schismatic activity, I
want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, hoping that next year the Church
will have put away from among us that wicked person and his Federal Vision.

Thank you.

Posted by Mark T.  at 6:27
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Labels: Fœdero Facts<http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/search/label/F%C5%93dero%20Facts>
 Sunday, December 30, 2007
Self-Deceit<http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/2007/12/self-deceit.html>

A couple of weeks ago Prince Blog wrote an extended post that appeared to
wave a truce flag at his "enemies." Of course, he only calls a truce when he
needs time to reload, but that's not the point here. The point is that he
closed his post with these words:

In short, I want to be active in this controversy to the extent I need to be
— I don't want to shirk — but neither do I want to be *defined* by this. If
any my friends out there see that definition forming, please feel free to
say so. ("All Wolves, All the
Time,"<http://dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=4875>emphasis
original)


This statement is interesting for a number of reasons; I want to consider
one. After the post went up, it moved a friend of mine (who knows Wilson *very
well*) so much that he called to say, *"For the first time in my life I
actually feel sorry for the man."* Not having read the post I said, "Okay,
you have my attention — *why do you feel sorry for him?"* My friend played
off Orwell, saying, "By the time a man turns fifty, he has the reputation he
deserves. Doug has systematically defined himself over the last decade with
one scandal after another, particularly this Federal Vision mess and his
hostile disruption of the PCA's process. It's as though he specifically
intended to make a spectacle of himself all these years and despite this, he
wrote, 'neither do I want to be *defined* by this.' I pity him. He is so
self-deceived that he has no idea he *is* defined."

This leads to another interesting quote, which I took from Dr. Clark who
quoted an article written by Dr. Darryl Hart on the Federal Vision in
the *Nicotine
Theological Journal*. Dr. Hart
wrote<http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/nicotine-theological-journal-24/>
,

Never before have such heavy guns as the church's highest courts and
multi-year study committees been used to defeat a meagre and frivolous
theological novelty.


Consider this. Dr. Hart is Adjunct Professor of Church
History<http://www.wscal.edu/faculty/bios/hart.php>at Westminster
Seminary California and he probably has more letters after
his name than all the CREC ministers combined. In other words, he's not a
popular story teller. He doesn't imagine historical revisions and
self-publish his fantasies in book form calling them factual accounts.
Moreover, he's not an anonymous attack blogger who fully documents each of
his posts. And as long as we're on it, he isn't even a self-willed *
autonomous* attack blogger who pretends his federation of marionettes holds
him accountable. Dr. Hart is the real deal with real credentials, and he
wrote, *"Never before have such heavy guns as the church's highest courts
and multi-year study committees been used to defeat a meagre and frivolous
theological novelty."*

This leads to yet another fascinating quote from Prince Blog, who just the
other day posted this comment on Green
Bagginses<http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/grace-not-as-amazing-as-once-thought-or-%e2%80%9ci-once-was-lost-then-i-was-found-but-now-i%e2%80%99m-lost-forever%e2%80%9d/#comment-42101>
:

All the refutations of FV I have read that maintain an FV/Westminster
contradiction generally get that result by misrepresenting what FV is
saying, or Westminster, or both.


Of course, we all know that these words have served as the FV party line
since the beginning, but the remarkable thing is that (1) they still repeat
it, and (2) it's possible that Wilson has actually believes it, which is an
extremely frightening thought for him. Read the two quotes back to back:

Never before have such heavy guns as the church's highest courts and
multi-year study committees been used to defeat a meagre and frivolous
theological novelty. (Dr. Darryl Hart)

All the refutations of FV I have read that maintain an FV/Westminster
contradiction generally get that result by misrepresenting what FV is
saying, or Westminster, or both. (Douglas Wilson)


A church historian (who is also an officer in the church) observes that the
Church has never used such heavy guns to defeat such a deficient theological
novelty, and Wilson cavalierly accuses every one of these big guns of
misrepresenting his doctrinal frivolities *and* the Westminster Confession
of Faith, as if the two stand side by side.

On my sidebar to the right there's a section called "A Great Cloud of
Witnesses: Fœdero Links." Beneath it there's a long list of articles and
official reports published by various Reformed denominations, presbyteries,
federations, and seminaries. Every one of them, *without
exception,*repudiates the Federal Vision in unmistakable terms. More
specifically, five
denominations — the BPC, the OCRC, the OPC, the PCA, and the RPCUS —
identified Douglas Wilson by name in their reports, yet he steadfastly
maintains that all of them, *without exception,* have misrepresented the FV
and/or the Westminster divines.

These facts lead me to believe that my friend is on to something. Douglas
Wilson really is pathetic. Self-deception can't run much deeper than this —
*can it?* He pays magnificent lip service to Mother Kirk with grand, exalted
language, but when Mother Kirk replies to him — *by name* — condemning his
doctrine with overwhelming judgments of breathtaking proportions, he accuses
her of misrepresentation instead of repenting of his sins. *And yet he does
not want this to define him.* Yo mama.

Prince Blog of the land of Mablog may deceive himself, esteeming his "meagre
and frivolous theological novelty" greater than the unanimous opinion of the
Church's highest courts. Indeed, he may delude himself by thinking that this
monumental folly — this catastrophic error in judgment — has not defined
him. To be sure, he may even fix his madness in stone by mocking the Church
and her ministers all day long to his heart's delight. But the future does
not bode well for Prince Blog because all his self-deceit cannot change the
one simple truth that these things *are* defining moments and *they have
defined him.* Even worse, Scripture offers no cure for his definition, or
condition, as the case may be, for Solomon warns, *"He, that being often
reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without
remedy."* Just ask Saddam Hussein.

Thank you.
 Posted by Mark T.  at 5:14
PM<http://federal-vision.blogspot.com/2007/12/self-deceit.html>  4
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-- 


Juanita Flores
Advocate for the Truth from Jesus
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