London Plagued (4 of 6)

"Even as Mead was exhorting his brethren to resume their preaching there were several who were already openly ministering day and night, and in the weeks which followed they were joined by many others who were ready to defy both death and the authorities if they might by any means save some. For the last time the Puritans mounted the pulpits vacated by their successors and preached to the vast congregations who again gathered to hear their former spiritual leaders. Vincent's graphic narrative brings the scene to life :

'Now they are preaching and every sermon was unto them as if they were preaching their last. Old time seems now to stand at the head of the pulpit, with its great scythe, saying with a hoarse voice. Work while it is called today, at night I will mow down. Grim death seems to stand at the side of the pulpit with its sharp arrow, saying. Do thou shoot God's arrows, and I will shoot mine. The grave seems to lie open at the foot of the pulpit, with dust in her bosom, saying,

Louden, thy cry
To God,
To Men,
And now fulfil thy trust:
Here thou must lie,
Mouth stopt,
Breath gone.
And silent in the dust.

Now there is such a vast concourse of people in the churches, where these ministers are to be found, that they cannot many times come near the pulpit doors for the press, but are forced to climb over the pews to them; And such a face is now seen in the assemblies, as seldom was seen before in London; such open ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would be eaten, which dropt from the mouths of ministers. If you ever saw a drowning man catch at a rope, you may guess how eagerly many people did catch at the Word, when they were ready to be overwhelmed by this overflowing scourge, which was passing thro' the city; when death was knocking at so many doors, and God was crying aloud by His judgments; and ministers were now sent to knock, cry aloud, and lift up their voice like a trumpet: then, then the people began to open the ear and the heart, which were fast shut and barred before: How did they then hearken, as for their lives, as if every sermon was their last; as if death stood at the door of the church and would seize upon them so soon as they came forth .... When the Lord Jesus Christ is made known, O the longing desires and openings of heart unto Him! When the riches of the Gospel are displayed, and the promises of the Covenant of Grace are set forth and applied, O the inward burnings and sweet flames which were on the affections! Now the net is cast, and many fishes are taken; many were brought to the birth, and I hope not a few were born again, and brought forth; a strange moving there was upon the hearts of multitudes in the city, and I am persuaded that many were brought over effectually unto a closure with Jesus Christ; whereof some died by the plague with willingness and peace; others remained stedfast in God's ways unto this day.'¹

The record of the service the Puritans gave London in the terrible summer of 1665 has never been written and probably never will be, but Walter Bell has told us enough about what went on in one parish to give us some conception of what their total labours must have been. Bell wrote the standard history of the Great Plague in 1924, from the viewpoint of a secular historian, and his testimony to the work of the ejected ministers in the plague year is perhaps all the more impressive because he has no personal sympathy with their religious convictions.

The Plague first appeared on the western outskirts of the City in the old parish of Thomas Case, St. Giles-in-the-Fields. After working terrible havoc in that district it spread, despite all efforts to contain it, swiftly and silently in all directions, and by July had carried death right into the heart of the City. The parish of St. Giles Cripplegate immediately became a centre of infection and in the next three months this parish alone lost 6,640 dead by the Plague, how many more were unrecorded no one knows. In the month of August the lists in the Burial Register of St. Giles Cripplegate fill one hundred pages and on one dreadful day, August 18th, there is the record of the burial of 151 of its parishioners! As this parish was a centre of plague, the Puritans also chose to make it a centre of spiritual warfare and grim was the conflict they waged for the Gospel with death walking and thinning their ranks on every hand. If the true annals of England's glory were to be written the battle of St. Giles Cripplegate would find a higher place than the Charge of the Six Hundred at Balaclava. There were perhaps several reasons why the Puritans seem to have concentrated their witness in this parish. Bell conjectures that poverty had forced some of the poorer Nonconformist ministers to take lodgings in this poorer district.² But others came willingly into the parish and the fact that before 1662 Cripplegate had experienced some bright years of spiritual harvest under the ministry of Dr. Samuel Annesley points us to a further reason. Annesley was as true a soul-winner as his grandson, John Wesley, and a better theologian. The last thirty years of his life he walked in "uninterrupted assurance of God's covenant love". Clearly after such a ministry there were believers who in the parish now needed care in their last hours. But care was not to be found in Annesley's successor, John Pritchett. Pritchett, a notorious pluralist, had been among the first to flee and never return till the infection was over. He left behind him one solitary curate to report the progress of events and to do the best he could. 'It was impossible,' writes Bell, 'that one man, however willing, could in the fearful conditions of Cripplegate minister to the whole of that large parish, bring consolation to the sick and shrive the dying. The work was done, and it was done by Nonconformist ministers. They are the real heroes of the Plague, the men whose golden example ennobles their great profession, and condemns the political Churchmen who made them outcasts .... They knew the risk they ran. In St. Giles Cripplegate burial register you read these names, all entered at the height of the Plague :—

Aug. 27 Samuel Austin, minister, plague.
Sept. 6 John Askew, minister, plague.
" 15 Samuel Skelton, minister, plague.
" 16 Abraham Jennaway (Janeway), minister, plague.
" 23 Henry Marley, minister, plague.
" 30 John Wall, minister, plague.

Two Others, John Grimes, a well-known Nonconformist divine, and Benjamin Needham, also described as 'minister', were buried in Cripplegate during the Plague .... Nothing strikes the imagination so vividly as the death of these many dissenting ministers, following so closely one upon another. They were the victims of persecution within the Church, and martyrs to the duty they accepted without flinching, when the courage of others failed. Dr. Pritchett, the fugitive vicar, lived to take the Bishopric of Gloucester. So the world rewards men.'³

Only a few of the sermons preached during the visitation have survived but they make solemn reading. One is a funeral sermon at burial of Abraham Janeway, mentioned in the list above, preached in the old pulpit of Edmund Calamy in Aldermanbury Church by Thomas Vincent. Vincent's words give us a further glimpse of what had been going on in Cripplegate. 'He showed great pity and compassion to souls,' testified Vincent of Janeway, 'he spent himself, and hastened his own death to keep others from perishing everlastingly'.

More soon. Spelling is as originally given.

Sam Drucker

Notes

1. God's Terrible Voice in the City was published in 1667. Vincent who had been minister of St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, before the Ejection, died in 1678.

2. "Often in the accounts of City parishes, when church wardens were giving their little charities or relief, I have come across entries such as 'To _____, a poor Minister, 1s.' and 'To a poor minister's widow, 1s. 6d.' - it is pathetic beyond words. For these were educated, spiritually-minded men, who had sacrificed all for conscience." Op.cit., p. 149

3. Op.cit., pp.149-152.

London Plagued (3 of 6 or 7)

Among the few shops that we might still have found open were bookshops and stationers, not because people were interested in literature but because some of these shops had taken on the trade of selling the quack medicines and remedies that had been offered to the public in ever-increasing numbers. On May 18th, 1665, Roger L'Estrange, the Censor of the Press who was also Editor of the weekly Newes had carried an advert in his paper announcing 'An excellent preservative against the Plague Pestilence' to be obtained, price two shillings and sixpence, from R. T. Rooks at the Lamb and Ink bottle in St. Paul's Churchyard. In the weeks that followed the adverts multiplied, some more expensive, like Avrum Velans offered at £5 per ounce, and, it was also said, more certain to cure. The Editor himself was not convinced; the daily sight and smell of the churchyard beneath his windows at last broke his nerve and he fled to Canterbury. If L'Estrange thought that his duties as Censor of the Press were no longer necessary in London we know of at least one proof that he was mistaken. That same 24th day of August, Matthew Mead was nearing the conclusion of a lengthy remedy against the Plague of a very different nature to L'Estrange's advertisements - Solomon's Prescription for the Removal of the Pestilence, being an exposition of 1 Kings 8. 37, 39, with a solemn text on the tide page, 'Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions, and the plague brake in upon them' Psa. 106 : 29. The publication was, of course, illegal and simply bore the initials 'M.M.' and in place of the publisher's name, 'London, printed in the Year MDCLXVL.'

Mead's book contained a moving appeal to the bishops to allow the 2,000 ministers, ejected or silenced by the Act of Uniformity of 1662, liberty to resume their preaching :

'Oh, why will you restrain them from speaking .... when the faces of so many thousands gather blackness and they starve and swoon and fall in the streets; why do you bind the hands of those who would so fain reach them forth the bread of life ... Oh, how confident should I be of obtaining that liberty I am begging of you was Christ Himself alive amongst us, or any of his Apostles, our governors. Had I the happiness to have lived in St. Paul's days and addressed myself to him with all humility and earnestness, imploring a leave to preach the Gospel, professing I had no carnal aim in it, but that my soul longed to be disclosing those mysteries and treasures of Love to poor senseless creatures, that were passing on to damnation, as not knowing, or considering what Christ had done to keep them thence, and that I would endeavour faithfully to declare the whole counsel of the Lord, without adding to, or diminishing ought from it; had I made such an address, do you think in your own consciences. He would have turned me away without any errand?'

It was God Himself, continued Mead, in his appeal to the bishops. who was now calling by His judgments, 'Let my faithful ministers have liberty to advance my Gospel', and to God he prayed, 'that this Supplication, which I am writing August 24, may through His good Providence, and the favour of Authority, do something to the reversing of the Act, whose being in force, took date from This day (three years since). This fatal Day that deserves to be wrote in Black Letters in England's Calendar.'

But having thus pleaded for a reversal of the decision of 1662, Mead finally reminded his Puritan brethren that their course of duty in the present crisis was not to be determined simply by the granting or withholding of the permission of the authorities. They lay, he declared, under a necessity to preach the Gospel and under a 'Woe' should they be negligent:

'You may reply, You have not leave given you, nor yet any maintainance allowed. But pray you, Who gave the Apostles and Primitive Christians leave for three hundred years after Christ and who maintained them? Where was such a clause inserted in your commission. Always provided that the Rulers of the World give you leave to perform your duties? If our ancestors had gone by this rule where had the Gospel been? .... If I have been solemnly consecrated to this work no command of the highest Emperor in the world can disoblige me from it: God must be honoured, the Gospel proclaimed, souls saved, my vows performed, storm and rage, forbid and hinder it, who will or can. Yea, though I die for it, I must tell those within my reach, who gave us our being, and keeps us alive, and to what end; who shed His blood for us, and why; and what we must do to be made partakers of the benefits He hath purchased: I must tell them of the evil and danger of sin, whither it leads, and what an Heaven holiness will end in. These are matters that the world must know, though a thousand deaths attend upon the publishers: And I would no longer care for a tongue or hand, than whilst I might speak or write of them.'

Yet despite such entreaties as Mead's, despite the many empty pulpits and deserted parishes, and despite the multitudes thronging daily into eternity, the bishops made no move to lift the persecution of the ejected ministers. Among the many examples which history affords of criminal episcopal inaction this record stands as one of the worst! Wonderful! that in the very time while the Plague was devouring,' wrote Richard Baxter to these 'Right Reverend Lords', 'and souls crowding out of time into eternity, and each man a terror to another, and about a hundred thousand dead in one City, you should be a terror to your surviving brethren, and study how to stop the mouths ofthose that would but help to prepare souls for so great a change! ... Yet nothing moveth you to see so great and grievous sins as the silencing of so many hundred ministers, and the starving of so many hundred thousand souls that never deserved evil at your hands! I must profess, if it were the last word that I should speak in the world, that I had rather be the basest scavinger, yea, and suffer many deaths, than be found at the Judgment-seat of Christ, in the place, and under the guilt of those of you who have done what is done against the Gospel and Church of Christ among us in this Land.'¹

All original spelling used. More soon.

Sam Drucker

Notes

1. An Apology for the Nonconformists' Ministry, 1681, pp. 234-5

By Faith the Righteous Shall Live.

Habakkuk 2:4(c) declares but the righteous will live by faith. (NIV)

Faith in the Word of God is the characteristic of the people of God down through the ages. The faithful hold firm to the integrity of the Word of God in the face of persecution. They will not cower and reinterpret that Word when the enemy assail it.

Here is a quote from "Lectures in Systematic Theology" by Robert L Dabney Page 257 - Theologian, of the late 19th Century in America:

"As remarked in a previous lecture, unless the Bible has its own ascertainable and certain laws of exposition, it cannot be a rule of faith; our religion is but rationalism. I repeat, if any part of the Bible must wait to have its real meaning imposed upon it by another, and a human science, that part is at least meaningless and worthless to our souls. It must express itself independently; making other sciences ancillary; and dominant over it."

Pity we don't have Theologians of the stamp of Dabney today. We do have a few but not many.

Sam Drucker

London Plagued (2 of 6 or 7)

"Perhaps no event was so to prove the true warmth and love that dwelt in the Puritan's heart as the year of the Great Plague: it demonstrated that they were indeed the last persons in London deserving of such epithets as cold, heartless and severe. The "hypocrisy" charge flung at them so repeatedly since the Restoration was now to boomerang with a vengeance upon their accusers. The people who ought to have stood by London left her helpless, and the men who had humanly no cause to stay, for they had been expelled from their labours and strictly speaking debarred from the City by the Corporation Act of 1664 (though it was never really enforced in London), were the very ones who did heroically stand in the breach. The Court of Charles II had early in July and the palace which three years before had resounded with revelry at the arrival of Catherine of Braganza was left as silent as a tomb. They cannot be blamed for seeking a more healthy locality than Whitehall, but as the leading historian of the Great Plague, Walter G. Bell, has written, the callous indifference with which the capital was left to its fate "must for ever remain a black stain on Charles' Government.''¹ But they were not the only ones of whom different things might have been expected. The College of Physicians at Amen Corner was as deserted as the palace of Whitehall and the Faculty away in the country. Worse still, perhaps, was the fact that so many of the clergy had joined in the rush out of town leaving their pulpits empty and their parishioners bereft of spiritual aid. This was not true of them all, but it was true enough to discredit the London clergy generally to cause pamphlets to be circulated in the streets announcing "Pulpits to Let", and to draw from Bishop Henchman the admission that most of his own officers had deserted him. "It will be no news to you," wrote Dr. Barwick to his friend William Sancroft, Dean of St. Paul's, who was on a long holiday at Tunbridge Wells" (for you can easily imagine it) that the mouths of a slanderous generation are wide open enough against those that are withdrawn, both of your profession and ours".²

Had we walked the narrow, airless streets that morning we should soon have seen evidence on every hand of the desolation that had first struck London three months before and was still spreading with silent but irresistible power. By now almost everything was being forgotten by the citizens except the concern to remain alive: houses stood shuttered as though the enemy was in every street - men fearing lest the very air they breathed might carry the plague; few were about except those driven by necessity; everywhere there were signs of neglect - stench in side-alleys unwashed by rain, grass growing were normally it had never been; neglect everywhere, that is, except in the grave-yards which appeared like ploughed fields with the earth turned in every available space and in some cases the very ground raised in order to accommodate the dead. Ten thousand dwellings stood marked with grim red crosses, a precaution that had been taken earlier to stop the spread of the plague by keeping all who lived in houses which the infection had reached locked within doors, but which was now being abandoned as matters were terribly beyond any attempts at control. When men were dying by tens or hundreds such measures were possible, now it was by thousands and not even the weekly Bills of Mortality nor the toiling Parish Clerks could keep trace of the numbers. One parish burial register contains an entry neatly begun but abruptly broken off, the page splattered with ink and the same handwriting no longer appearing on future pages. The clerk of burials was not exempt from death. Perhaps the number that died between that 24th day of August and the end of that same month was something near 10,000. "Now the cloud is very black," writes Thomas Vincent in his 'God's Terrible Voice in the City', "and the storm comes down upon us very sharp. Now people fall as thick as leaves from the trees in autumn, when they are shaken by a mighty wind .... Now in some places where the people did generally stay, not one house in an hundred but is infected; and in many houses half the family is swept away; in some the whole, from the eldest to the youngest; few escape with the death of but one or two; never did so many husbands and wives die together; never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave, and go together into the same house under earth, who had lived together in the same
house upon it."

Such was London on that summer's morning, what it was by night - the rumbling death-carts, the calls of the drivers and bearers ("a foul-mouthed crew"), the plague pits and grave-yards illuminated by flickering torch-light for the work which was generally left till darkness - these are things best passed over in silence."

More soon.

Sam Drucker

Notes

1. The Great Plague in London in 1665 by Walter G. Bell (1924) p68

2. Op. cit., p.224

London Plagued (1 of 6 or 7)

This essay while slightly off track here still has a message for today. It was written about 50 years ago but draws from much earlier historical records.

"To the Puritans the city of London was the fairest city upon earth. They loved the very appearance of that square mile of cobbled, winding, streets, with their gabled, rough-cast and timbered houses - the upper stories projecting crazily outwards and the steeply-pitched red roofs reaching skywards. It was still, at the time of the Restoration of Charles II, a city enclosed by high and solid walls, but higher than the walls there stood out against the skyline a hundred church towers and spires, for London's churches were three times as numerous as those of any other city in the world. From the southern bank of the Thames the panorama of old London gave the seventeenth century artist fine scope for his skill: the houses crowding down to the very water's edge, the single ancient bridge with its nineteen stone arches and the river itself busy with "wherries" carrying passengers to Westminster and Vauxhall and with stoutly built vessels - the pride of England's craftsmen - home from almost all points of the compass. Thomas Brooks considered the Italian proverb about Venice far more applicable to England's capital, "He who hath not seen it will not believe, and he who hath not lived some time there doth not understand what a duty it is".

London was the centre of England in every sense - law, finance, commerce, shipping and, what we would tend to overlook, industry - were all then centred in the city. The finest shops and the busiest crafts were all there. Coopers, tanners, dyers, vintners, printers, these and many another trade made the city thrive with activity.

The old walls had never been built to contain the near half million people who now made London their home and the out-parishes which clustered around the two miles of wall were already in most cases densely over-crowded. Nor had the streets, with no pavements, been meant for the wheeled traffic that in Restoration times was harassing shop-keepers, pedestrians and drivers alike. Pepys mentions how his coach-driver one day knocked two pieces of a butcher's meat flying into the dirt and such incidents were evidently not uncommon sights. But these were just some of the signs that London was prospering, and with her prosperity was bound up the fortunes of the nation for no other English city had any comparable importance. Norwich, the second largest city in the land, had a population of no more than 30,000, and Bristol, which came third, only some 25,000. Probably about one in every fourteen people in Britain lived in London. "Was not London the glory of England?" Brooks was later to ask, "Was not London England’s treasury and the Protestants' sanctuary? Was not London as terrible to her enemies abroad, as she was joyous to her friends at home?"¹

Thursday, the 24th of August, 1665, came as had so many days of the weeks gone by, hot and cloudless. The weather of the past months had been not simply abnormal but phenomenal; apart from the times when breezes had stirred the motionless vanes on the Church spires the city had known days of sweltering heat and except for one fall of rain earlier in the month there had been no rain at all since April; "the driest summer that ever man have knew, or our forefathers mention of late ages", wrote Richard Baxter. Approaching the City from the south we would pass through meadows brown, dry and "burnt like the High-ways", into what had been the busy suburb of Southwark; there in the river-side parish of St. Olave by London Bridge, one of the Puritan ministers, John Allin, was busy writing to friends at Rye where he had ministered until 1662. We can hear part of his letter before we cross the Bridge into the City: "August 24 - I am, through mercy, yet well in the middest of death, and that, too, approaching neerer and neerer; not many doores off, and the pitt open dayly within view of my chamber window. The Lord fit me and all of us for our last end!"²

That morning the water of the rapids was tumbling through the arches of the old Bridge with an arresting distinctness for there were few other sounds to break the stillness which hung over the City. The wherries were mostly tied up and deserted at the landing stages, shop-keepers no longer called their wares, traffic no more struggled to get through jostling pedestrians and even the church bells - as though hoarse with continual tolling - were growing silent. The City gates were guarded, not to keep people out (for that there was no need) but to keep people in. Once it had become evident that London was in the grip of bubonic plague there had been such an exodus of both the well and the infected that in the second week of June it was announced that none could leave without a certificate of health signed by the Mayor. Having crossed the old Bridge we would immediately pass St. Magnus Church - memorable for the ministry of Joseph Caryl which had ended at the Great Ejection of 1662 - and if we climbed Fish Street Hill we would soon be in the heart of the London the Puritans loved.

More soon.

Sam Drucker

Notes

1. Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, Vol 6, p. 165. (Nichol's edition 1866-67.)

2. Quoted in The Great Plague in London in 1665 by Walter G. Bell (1924) p.259.

Theological Smoke Screen.

Biblical Creationists within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney are ever mindful of the declension which has come upon much of the International Christian Church in the past one hundred years save an occasional localized revival. Within this Diocese, Biblical Creationists experience frustration at hearing and reading things which are a departure from orthodox theology. Attempts to air concerns are so often shut down.

The problem just described is not new. It has been experienced by others elsewhere and I provide herewith an excerpt from an article written by John R. de Witt in the Banner of Truth journal of September 1969 under the heading "Theological Smoke Screen".

"Just recently I came upon an article in a Dutch journal which berated laymen for the questions they are presently asking in the Netherlands. They demand to know of their professors of theology and ministers the answers to such questions as, Was Adam really an historical person? and, Did Christ rise from the dead with the same body as he had before? (a query which seeks to ascertain, of course, the factualness of the resurrection itself). Now it may be true, as the writer insisted, that these questions often represent considerable over-simplifications. There was, for instance, a great difference in Christ's body after the resurrection. But what men are really asking, it ought to be clear to every fair-minded observer, concerns the empty tomb. And one cannot expect from ordinary church members the theological acumen and appreciation for nuances and fine points to be found in a university professor. People are disturbed. They want to know what their leaders are thinking. How else are they to phrase matters that are both intensely personal and also of the utmost religious significance ? It is strange surely that instead of replying to them, in Holland, Britain, America, and elsewhere, a theologian takes up his pen to condemn, not those who have given cause for offence and are responsible for raising the doubts, but those who ask the questions. Accurately put or not, the historicity of Adam and the bodily resurrection of Christ are two of the most crucial tenets in the whole of Christian theology. The fact that queries about them are resented, and that they are answered, not directly, but with censures and hedging, is at the same time still another indication of the camouflage and smoke screen that theologians feel obliged to use (one suspects) to confuse the issues and to avoid a plain statement which would lay bare their own uncertainties.

Well, what can a concerned Christian do? Must he flee away and hide himself from the questions of the day? Has he no alternative to separation and withdrawal into still more tightly closed evangelical ghettos than he has known before? It is not easy to give an answer. And yet, is not flight an ignominious, degrading thing for one whose Father made the world? A final remedy is not at our disposal. Revival and reformation come from another source. But a Christian has some weapons available to him. He can do many things. He can pray. He can be faithful. Faithfulness to the truth and prayer have always been powerful remedies, and the world knows nothing against them. He can also prepare himself spiritually and intellectually, by study, by reading, by attention to the truth. And he can ask questions. God deliver us from so-called Christians with placid, uninquiring minds who believe everything they hear and can even be content with the preaching of half-truth and error!"

A point to make is that the recent comment in debate by Sydney Roman Catholic Archbishop Pell with Richard Dawkins reveals some of the fruit of the emerging degenerate theology of the past century. Rejection of the integrity of Genesis 1 can produce a denial of the historicity of the first Adam and resultant false doctrine of the salvation found and the second Adam. There is too a slippery slope on this front which some today are on and their teaching within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney will, one day, bear fruit of the nature of doctrine espoused by Archbishop Pell.

A final point is that objection to what is going on must continue to produce frustration as obfuscation rules the day. Others before have encountered the same so persevere, pray the Lord and wait on Him in faith for better days.

Sam Drucker

Calvin, Creation and Original Sin.

It has happened in debate in Comments Sections of this blogspot and has happened in discussion with people who have been through or who have been on faculty of Moore Theological College - the theological seminary of the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. They say that man is so depraved by original sin that Apostle Paul's conviction of man rendered at Romans 1:19-20 cannot be interpreted to say that man can see anything of the invisible qualities of God in Creation. Consequently, it is their contention that evangelism should not involve pointing to the Creation as a means to arouse the attention of man toward God i.e. Natural Theology.

The asserted basis for their argument is Calvinist doctrine. However, my reading of Calvin's work does not reach the same conclusion.

Recent reading has reaffirmed my perception of the position of Calvin and the errant reading of him by those inhabiting and flowing out of Moore Theological College.

Contributors to The Banner of Truth Journal are as Calvinist and Reformed as you can get. An article by Donald MacLeod in the February 1968 edition of that publication entitled Misunderstandings of Calvinism II sub-heading Total Depravity offers a fair representation of the traditional rendering of Calvinistic doctrine. I provide an extract herewith:

"The impression is often given that in its exposition of human sinfulness Calvinism has painted an absurdly overdrawn picture. 'Total depravity, as commonly understood, means that we are sinful and nothing else - utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.' The incredible picture is drawn in pure black.'66 J. S. Mill pushed this to the extreme of suggesting that on the Calvinistic view, 'Human nature being radically corrupt there is no redemption for any one until human nature is killed within him.'67

These are but ill-informed caricatures. The portrayal of man as wholly and absolutely evil, redeemed only in the destruction of his nature, is as abhorrent to Calvinists as to any. This is clearly brought out in the following words of Thomas Chalmers: 'There is a way of maintaining the utter depravity of our nature, and of doing it in such a style of sweeping and of vehement asseveration, as to render it not merely obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious to the understanding . . . Let the nature of man be a ruin, as it certainly is, it is obvious to the most common discernment that it does not offer one unvaried and unalleviated mass of deformity.'68 That no man is absolutely depraved; that all men are not equally depraved; that in human history there is much that is admirable [self-sacrificing patriotism, altruistic domestic love, brilliant achievements in art and science] - these things have been frankly acknowledged. The divine image in man, although marred, has not been obliterated.

One detail is of special importance in this connection - the insistence of Reformed theology that man, even fallen man, possesses an ineradicable awareness of God, a sense of dependence and of responsibility. 'That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute, since God Himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of His Godhead ... a sense of Deity is inscribed on every heart.'69 This has a distinct bearing on Evangelism and Apologetics, providing a point of contact between the gospel and the natural man. Professions of agnosticism and atheism are not to be taken at their face-value: rather, the evangel is to be addressed to the innate religiousness and the native theism of man."

The line run by many associated with Moore Theological College is not the position of those who have, in the past, adhered to Calvin's Institutes.

How could so many with links to Moore Theological College so misunderstand Calvin yet assert resolutely to the world they uphold Calvinistic doctrine? Is it because they wish to disassociate themselves from the Deism prevalent in the Church when people such as William Paley espoused Natural Theology? Is it because they have been shaken by the 'seeming' defeat of Samuel Wilberforce in his use of Design argument in debate with Thomas Huxley in the 19th Century?

I have come to the conclusion that one or more of those propositions may apply in anyone individual but a deeper problem is at work. It is associated with their departure from Calvin on another matter - on the doctrine of Creation.

Time and time again they are exposed, as leaders in the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic Church in Sydney have of late been exposed, to having a doctrine of Creation and Fall unhinged from the rest of the Word of God. Being aware of their shortcoming in this aspect of doctrine they lack confidence to engage in serious discussion on the Bible and Science. Not only so, they have built a defence which excludes any consideration of Natural Theology as a tool in evangelism and are quick to dissuade others from this resort. To shore up their defence they depart from the Apostle Paul and John Calvin to the point of asserting things of them that neither said but still declaring they, themselves, are Apostolic and Calvinist in doctrine.

Biblical Creationists have heavyweights such as Apostle Paul and John Calvin on their side in their approach to evangelism so long as they declare the whole gospel of Jesus Christ in opportunities our Lord gives them to bear testament to Him. That gospel commences with the doctrine of Creation and reaches fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the Person of the Son.

Sam Drucker

Notes

66 Macintosh, The Christian Experience of Forgiveness, p 64

67 Op. Cit., p119,

68 Commercial Discourses, p 10, Cf. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, p228:

'While the Scripture statement is so strong in asserting a corruption of man's whole
nature, and in assigning that corruption to the centre and fountain of his moral
life, and while the force of that statement is vainly sought to be evaded or softened down, yet the Scripture asserts no corruption, depravation or destruction of his natures, faculties, or powers as such . . . while man since the Fall can do no good in any divine relation, his natural and civil actions may be correct and virtuous.'

69 John Calvin, Institutes, Vol 1: p 43

Sydney Episcopalians' Narrow Reading of Scripture.

Many Sydney Episcopalians, when approached by Biblical Creationists with the Romans 5:12 (KJV)reading:

"5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned"

as testament to death entering the world when Adam sinned are quick to say "But that only refers to death occurring to man not to animals!"

They say this to defend their compromise with the 'world' on the alleged long age for the earth. In their compromised position they have to allow a long age of death and struggle for animals - thus accounting for a fossil record of death in the animal 'kingdom'.

What the compromise fails to take account of is other Scripture, one passage of which is
Hebrews 9:24-26 (KJV) which reads:

"9:24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: 9:25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; 9:26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."

The context of the passage is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ being a better sacrifice for sin than the year after year sacrifice of animals offered by priests for sin. What is important to note is the content of verse 26. The writer of Hebrews makes the point that if Christ's sacrifice of himself was not a once for all sacrifice then it was necessary for him to make a sacrifice of himself repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

The clear implication is that man's sin came very early in earth history "since the foundation of the world" and, obviously, "death by sin".

Man's sin and death coming so early in earth history rules out any possibility of a long age of death and struggle in the animal 'kingdom' and consequent build up of a fossil record before the appearance and sin of Adam.

Such a scenario fits best with another passage of Scripture viz. Romans 8:19-23 (KJV) which reads:

"19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

It was the incidents recorded in Genesis 3 which brought sin and death into the world for man and animals and this all very early after creation of the world.

Sam Drucker

When Moore Theological College Got Into Bed With The World.

A revealing and lamentable Choices insert appeared in this month's issue of Southern Cross, the Sydney Episcopalian Diocesan Newspaper. Revealing and lamentable with respect to its article headed "Moore gets ACCREDITED". Notice the triumphalism expressed by the article writer with all capitals used for the word accredited. The implication being that to be seen as acceptable by the world is something to cheer about.

August 30, 2011 is given as the date Moore Theological College received a letter from the NSW Government Department of Education and Communities approving the college as an institution with self-accrediting authority (SAA). The article says:

"The college decided to seek SAA status for a number of reasons. It will provide the college with the flexibility to respond to changes among the churches and other constituencies that it serves and also the changes taking place in higher education. The college also believes that SAA will provide a cost-effective means to ensure continuous quality improvement in the courses that it offers. In order to achieve SAA Moore College was required to demonstrate a proven track record of higher education approvals. Approvals covered the college as a whole and each of its courses individually. It involved rigorous review by both state and federal accrediting agencies of the college's entire operations, of compliance with all higher education protocols and of the quality environment of excellence within the college. It involved presenting evidence, lots of evidence, that it met the standards or all the various accreditation regimes and at the standard of an Australian university."

and later: "The college welcomed and valued the input from many university academics who participated, and will continue to participate, in the quality reviews of college courses and operations."

Writers of the past have linked the declension of the church in Great Britain to theological institutions seeking after academic recognition. The same is on in Sydney. Christians are to enjoy the commendation of God - not the world. What are secular academics doing in a theological institution ensuring "compliance with all higher education protocols"?

To receive and retain accreditation Moore Theological College has to remove contention with the world on the subject of Origins. To do that it must reduce the clear conviction of Scripture, the affirming view of the majority of early Christian fathers and the reaffirming view of the Reformers on Origins to just another view alongside, even syncretising with worldly views. I cannot see students of Moore Theological College ever again receiving, with convicting authority, the message of Creation delivered and sustained by God through the generations (particularly the high periods of the Christian Church). An "accredited" Moore Theological College will be under pressure to compromise on other doctrine.

Christians are a peculiar people in this world. They are not obligated to the world. They "live not on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). It ought not be the pursuit of any theological institution to get into bed with the tool of Satan viz. the world. Theological institutions are obligated to God through the Church and the Church should be assisting those who go through ministry training. Relying on government financial assistance toward students through enrolment in accredited institutions is not the way to go.

There is a price to pay for infidelity and it will be the scattering of that which purports to be the Church today.

Sam Drucker

"Good Without God"? (Part 2)

I questioned in an earlier blog the capacity for Sydney Atheists to be good without God as their catchcry declares. The most well known Atheist in Australia, Julia Gillard, certainly is no recommendation having betrayed Kevin Rudd in planning his overthrow, betraying the nation over her election promise over a carbon tax and now being embroiled in protecting a couple of politicians who, all indications suggest, bring no credit on Parliament. The latter scenario demonstrates a woeful "Whatever it takes attitude" to being in government. Anything but morality, it seems. Now word comes to me of a presentation at a church last Sunday in a Sydney suburb at which a group of Atheists attended, presumably for 'sport'. Separately to that group a young man attended at invitation of a church goer. Soon after the speaker commenced his address this young man rudely interjected. He was asked to contain himself until an opportunity presented to speak later. Thankfully he apologised at the end of the session. Later, an older man, apparently part of a group of Atheists, contended with the speaker. He declared himself to be a lecturer at university but it was discovered later by someone who had worked with him many years ago in satellite research and development that, some years ago, the man did a part time and short duration stint of teaching a course and was now working in the construction industry. Sad that he should mislead as he did. Sad that being good without God was not on demonstration by Atheists that day. Sam Drucker

Elements Down-Grade in Sydney Episcopalian Church (Part 3 - final)

The first two instalments of this series provided a background to the Down-Grade Controversy in the Nonconformist Church in England in the late 19th Century. The purpose of this final instalment is to apply that controversy to the Episcopalian Church in Sydney, Australia, of late 20th and early 21st Century. It is not within this writer's knowledge whether full comparison exists so I will confine this blog to the issue of trust in the Word of God which does bear comparison. I must also add that, even in this, I suspect there will be many incidents of note which I don't have knowledge of. Clearly, leaders of the Nonconformist Church in England had departed from trust in the Word of God and left themselves open to receiving doctrines contrary to Reformed doctrine. These errant doctrines they nurtured and permitted to be taught in theological institutions, thus submitting future preachers, teachers and leaders of the Nonconformist Church to distrust in the Word of God and false doctrine. What made the situation all the more galling was the stealth employed by the leaders of the Nonconformist Church - concealing their unorthodox doctrine. The process, planned or otherwise, was done under the veil of professed evangelicalism. So effective was the move that, at the end of the controversy, people such has C. H. Spurgeon were almost friendless in their argument against this declension in the church. Also evident is the strategy of the leaders to avoid controversy within the church as the malaise was spreading. That brings me to the Sydney Episcopalian Church today. Some matters I will raise here have been mentioned intermittently on this blogspot previously but it is necessary to bring them together for this study. Approximately 100 years after the Down-Grade Controversy in England, the Principal of Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia, informed students in their college's publication Societas that students needed to consider science in their theological studies and alerted them to preparations for this need to be met at the college. Following this occurred the appointment to faculty of a man with very close links to an organization purportedly made up Christians with scientific qualification. This man, like other members of the organization, had made the Word of God subject to the current world view on the origin of life inasmuch as the Word of God had to be interpreted through the glasses of 'science'. This man had been given access to the mind of students of Moore Theological College. Worse still, he was the means by which the organization itself gained access to students to colour their mind with a view on origins alien to the thoughts of the Reformers and one that sits uncomfortably with the Word of God - it does not sit as one with the Word of God. As a sidelight I mention that those in a Christian organization who upheld the Reformers' position on Origins attempted to reach students with a seminar on campus encountered discouragement from the college. Nevertheless, the seminar went ahead but word reaching this writer indicates students were discouraged from within the college to attend the event. The infiltration did not stop there. The organization gained access to students of New College, a residential for Christian students studying at the University of NSW. At one event sponsored by the organization the speaker attempted to demolish the Reformation stance of Genesis 1 being an historical rendering of the Creation account. In that speaker's mind, the writer of Genesis 1 was presenting something of a concealed message because of the extent of literary devices employed in the text. The organization has gained access to churches as well and this writer has attended two such events. In another digression I mention that, as with all my encounters with the organization's members, the speakers at these events have no complete doctrine on the Creation account. It is all very tenuous and sits poorly with the rest of Scripture and its vital doctrines. I recall one event when during the supper afterward, which was to be an opportunity for question and answer, the speaker was so shamefully found lacking in his doctrinal position that he went and hid in his car when failing to reason out his case. Further testament to the dangerous theology found at one time within the organization can be observed when a member was asked some years ago how he reconciles Jesus Christ's teaching about a 'young' earth with what current scientific view espouses. The member's response was "Jesus didn't know as much science as we do today." I can only conclude that man, though purporting to be a Christian, did not believe that Jesus Christ, Son of God, is Creator through Whom all things were made and in Him all things hold together. Back to the point of this blog. The sorry situation is that elements of the 19th Century Down-Grade Controversy in the Nonconformist Church in England have emerged in the Sydney Episcopalian Church some hundred years hence. A body of people purporting to represent the Word written but who demonstrate they more readily represent their peers in schools of science have been given access, by leaders in the church, to the minds of Christians. Because they rely on the testimony of people who look at objects in the present and, from these, attempt to interpret events of the past they devolve an interpretation of the Word written in Genesis 1 far below that which God has bequeathed to Christians in equal portion from generation to generation. The fruit of this degenerate theology made itself evident in recent times when a graduate of the time from Moore Theological College and subsequently returning to be on faculty at that institution could make the astonishing claim, when questioned publicly, that the mention of a man called Noah in the genealogy at Genesis 5 was no basis for believing that Noah was a real person. The down-grade is in place and moving through the Sydney Episcopalian Church through a former Principal of Moore Theological College having given a world influenced body of people access to impressionable students. The baton is being passed from one generation of leadership to another and the direction, left unchecked, will be down, down, down. Sam Drucker

Elements of Down-Grade in Sydney Episcopalian Church (Part 2)

I think it necessary to provide a little more on the correspondence emanating from the camp of Charles Haddon Spurgeon on the issue known as the "Down-Grade Controversy" of the late 19th Century before I apply it to the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney. In the March 1887 there appeared the first of two articles written by Robert Shindler, close associate of Charles Spurgeon and fellow Baptist Pastor, in the Sword and Trowel under the heading of the "The Down Grade". I provide extracts herewith: "The Presbyterians were the first to get on the down line," said Shindler. "They paid more attention to classical attainments and other branches of learning. . . . It [became] an easy step in the wrong direction to pay increased attention to academical attainments in their ministers, and less to spiritual qualifications; and to set a higher value on scholarship and oratory, than on evangelical zeal and ability to rightly divide the word of truth." Shindler took aim at the leadership of the Nonconformist church because of the degree of secrecy in which they gave over to doubt about Reformation principles and belief, saying: "These men deepened their own condemnation, and promoted the everlasting ruin of many of their followers by their hypocrisy and deceit; professing to be the ambassadors of Christ, and the heralds of his glorious gospel, their aim was to ignore his claims, deny him his rights, lower his character, rend the glorious vesture of his salvation, and trample his crown in the dust." He concluded the article with: "These facts furnish a lesson for the present times, when, as in some cases, it is all too plainly apparent men are willing to forego the old for the sake of the new. But commonly it is found in theology that that which is true is not new, and that which is new is not true." The April, 1887 edition of Sword and Trowel provided the second instalment and reemphasized the failure of the Nonconformist church to deal with those in the pulpit espousing doctrine contrary to that of the Reformation. I provide herewith some quotes: [The] "tadpole of Darwinism was hatched. . . [in a pew] of the old chapel in High Street, Shrewsbury," where Charles Darwin had first been exposed to scepticism by a pastor who was full on with Socinianism. "In the case of every errant course there is always a first wrong step. If we can trace that wrong step, we may be able to avoid it and its results. Where, then, is the point of divergence from the "King's highway of truth"? What is the first step astray? Is it doubting this doctrine, or questioning that sentiment, or being sceptical as to the other article of orthodox belief? We think not. These doubts and this scepticism are the outcome of something going before. The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures. All the while a man bows to the authority of God's Word, he will not entertain any sentiment contrary to its teaching. 'To the law and to the testimony,' is his appeal concerning every doctrine. He esteems that holy Book, concerning all things, to be right, and therefore he hates every false way. But let a man question, or entertain low views of the inspiration and authority of the Bible, and he is without chart to guide him, and without anchor to hold him." and "In looking carefully over the history of the times, and the movement of the times, of which we have written briefly, this fact is apparent: that where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the Holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result." I will conclude with the final instalment in a few days. Sam Drucker

Elements of Down-Grade in Sydney Episcopalian Church

Readers may or may not be familiar with the late 19th Century "Down-Grade Controversy" of the English Nonconformist church with Charles Haddon Spurgeon at the forefront of the battle to defend the Word of God in the life and practice of the church. Provided hereunder is an extract of an article dealing with the background to the Down-Grade Controversy written by Michael Boland for the February 1968 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal.

"The story of the progress of the critical view of the Bible among Nonconformist denominations has been well told from the point of view of one who sympathises with the movement, in Evangelical Nonconformists and Higher Criticism in the Nineteenth Century by Dr Willis B. Glover. Glover concedes that the abandonment of the traditional attitude towards the Bible was not necessarily the result of objective scientific discoveries, so much as of the spirit of the age [p 71]. According to his account, the take-over process was certainly rapid. Higher criticism did not get a foothold in England until after 1880 [p 36]. Yet by the mid I890's 'the new approach to the Bible had been accepted by the overwhelming majority of Nonconformist leaders and was taught in all the leading Nonconformist colleges.' [p 213], although 'there remained large numbers of laymen and some ministers who never accepted the new criticism even in principle.' Nonconformist leaders had, in fact, rejected the doctrine of inerrancy before 1880. In 1868, Alexander Raleigh declared in his Chairman's address to the Congregational Union that there were errors and mistakes in the Bible, and R. W. Dale, who succeeded him, took the same position the following year.

The path of higher criticism was smoothed by several factors. For one thing, Glover shows how it attained respectability through being adopted, or at least tolerated, by men whose orthodoxy or piety was unchallenged. 'The men who led England into a critical view of the Bible were men known for theological orthodoxy', men like William Robertson Nicoll, Editor of the British Weekly, and regarded as an evangelical, who could uphold the doctrine of eternal punishment in his columns and at the same time give a hearing to Higher Criticism. Alexander MacLaren, bar Spurgeon the great Baptist preacher of his day, was classed among the conservatives at the time of the Down-Grade controversy. Yet of him Glover writes, 'The example of so great a preacher who was tolerant of higher criticism and who even entertained the possibility that the story of the fall was mythical could not have been without effect.' [p 139]. Glover also shows how 'the experiential emphasis of the evangelicals could relegate the whole problem of criticism to insignificance.' [p137]. 'Evangelicals would tolerate almost any divergence in doctrine provided the individual concerned was known to have a fervent evangelical experience, and above all if his ministry awakened the same experience in others.' [p 93]. An example of this was when Robert F. Horton advocated critical views in Inspiration and the Bible. This aroused strong criticism, which was, however, blunted by the fact that 'the Biblical critic was also a prominent missioner.'

One remarkable feature of the introduction to Nonconformist churches of critical views of the Bible pointed out by Glover, was their 'gradual acceptance without serious and church-splitting controversy.' This was, as we have just seen, partly because Nonconformity's trusted leaders accepted them, either positively or by default. Another reason was the policy of stealth adopted by some who had embraced higher criticism. Glover speaks of 'the tendency of some who were in advance of the general movement of opinion to hide their more unorthodox ideas from the public' 'This', he claims, 'was unquestionably an instance of sound political sense.' Others may agree with Spurgeon's view that it was more like dishonesty. In the event, however, these men were successful in keeping their churches, and preserving their denominations from splits, which presumably was the reward they were seeking.

In a sense, then, when Spurgeon wrote his Down-Grade articles, English Nonconformity was in the thick of a conflict over the Bible, as to whether it could any longer be accepted as an infallible rule for doctrine and practice. In another sense, however, the battle was already over and lost. Conservative scholars, Glover argues, were accepting the presuppositions of the critics. When Alfred Cave tried to answer the critics on the Old Testament, he sought to establish the authority of the Bible on a critical and historical basis. Glover points out that while Cave claimed that what was involved was a battle of standpoints, he himself seemed to have accepted the standpoint of higher criticism, [p 193]. Thus the English conservative scholars fought the battle on points of detail, rather than by challenging the over-all approach of the critics, as did the American Princeton school of Greene and Warfield, whom Robertson Nicoll claimed were 'the only respectable defenders of verbal inspiration.' Spurgeon, who was not primarily a theologian though by no means a theological ignoramus, was one of the few who had not yielded the battle, and he rejected the Higher Critical approach root and branch [although one review did appear in the Sword and Trowel of a book by C. A. Briggs expressing 'our unqualified approval and our lively admiration of this entire work,' being subsequently repudiated when the British Weekly drew Spurgeon's attention to the character of the book, 'a somewhat advanced and superficial product of the critical school.']

On Spurgeon's attitude to Higher Criticism, Willis B. Glover concludes, 'Spurgeon was so far behind the general movement of opinion that his own more logical judgment was scarcely understood.' This is at least a tribute to his consistency."

Later this week I intend applying some principles and observations derived from that article to the present Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.

Sam Drucker

"Science" that kills

That great reptilian from outer space, Richard Dawkins, is in town. His pseudo and anti-science circus is on its way to Melbourne for a week-long gab fest about how mad and bad Christians and wicked creationists are. Dawkins, in case you don't recognise him, will be the guy with his back, always, to the clock. After the very late pullout of his mate Chris Hitchens, Richard has been assiduously and, rumour has it, quite superstitiously avoiding allowing any timepiece to relay to him just how many minutes, hours, days and, as he secretly hopes, years, left for his purely atomistic body to, well, implode. Poor chap, only looks half the man he was a few years back.

Anyway, Richard's doing a double act with Lawrence Krauss, a bloke from Arizona State University. Lawrence Krauss has recently written a book titled A Universe from Nothing. Of course, if you believe, in agreement with African Voodoo witchdoctors and New Age Raelian crystal worshippers, that life can just arise from non-life by some magical incantation or aliens, as Richard is now apparently firmly supporting, then you have no problem, apart from a few untidy and intransigent mathematical equations that refuse to make zero=everything, with whole universes being able[Cue in the sound of a scientist's fillip] to pop out of, well, NO THING.

Lawrence got a few hundred words in the Herald last week. His attempt to make out that it was science vs religion and science wins, always, failed miserably. Read a friend’s letter which pointed out a few uncomfortable scientific facts Lawrence didn’t know about. Quite a comic Lawrence is. Hope he’s also got a sense of humour.

Dear Lawrence,

In your Saturday’s Herald piece you posed to the reader what ostensibly appeared as a Hobson’s choice between science and religion. You implied that a person would only be rational if they elected to use the Heimlich Manoeuvre on someone in the throes of choking rather than praying over them. Of course, truly rational and scientific people, like myself, would only give each of those roughly a 50:50 chance of working at best. Your quite decidedly irrational faith that the Heimlich actually works would have been exposed if you’d left the ivory tower and undertaken a first aid course. The first thing the instructor tells you is that the Heimlich is actually dangerous and can injure you. Pressing hard and fast on unprotected organs, as this manoeuvre requires, can injure severely the person and may not in fact work, notwithstanding the TV sit-coms you’ve obviously obtained your pseudo-scientific first aid knowledge from.

Furthermore, your unfortunate choice of the Heimlich to express the superiority of your materialist philosophy is doubly ironic. Heimlich’s wife authored books on homoeopathy and other “cures”, while according to his son Peter, he was a complete fraud. Heimlich himself has also tossed up his own brand of quackery: advocating the use of malaria to cure HIV.

Well, Lawrence, I really shouldn’t be surprised that you entertain such poor standards of rationality and instead opt for the unscientific religious; after all, every first-year philosophy undergrad knows that ex nihilo nihil fit rules, OK!

Kind regards

Is Evangelicalism Just a Cult?

Readers may wonder why I am inclined to republish writings of the past. The intent is to look back and see the position from where evangelicalism has shifted. The way to see if a stick is straight is to hold it against a stick proven in the past to be straight.

There are many dangers for Christendom and the penalties for straying are severe.

In this spirit I provide an article written by Paul Helm in the January 1968 edition of the Banner of Truth Journal.

"IS EVANGELICALISM JUST A CULT?

What is a cult ? Most of us have a rough idea; a tightly-knit, rather rootless religious group claiming to have 'the truth', but in fact catering for the religious needs of a particular group - the mystical, the heavily eschatological, those who crave certainty above truth, those distrustful of 'modern thought' - the misfits of our society.

We do not include ourselves - the evangelicals - in our list of cults. Why not? There is not a shadow of a doubt that in the minds of many we are lumped together with the Witnesses, the Mormons and the rest. To them we are 'religious', having a language, friends, activities and values of our own; yet often aggressively confident that we have the truth; another, rather faded, 'special offer' in the religious bargain-basement.

Why are people wrong to think this way about the evangehcal faith? Why must they be wrong ? The crucial difference, the one we have for too long forgotten [to our peril] is that a true evangelicalism is only meaningful set in the midst of human life, with its endeavours and initiatives, its suffering and its folly, and its sin. The evangelical faith is credible when set in the context of creation, of life, and of human history. By 'credible' here is not meant 'is more easily accepted' but that the unique claims made by the biblical gospel will only be seen for what they are when set in such a context. The gospel gets its edge when this background is understood, and the 'christian life' becomes meaningful when Christians see that it consists in thinking-out and living-out the implications of such a gospel; implications that are understood not only in general spiritual terms but in the concrete demands of human life-work, the family, leisure, politics, the arts.

The cults do not think like this at all. They are self-contained sub-cultures catering for specific needs. They do not have any doctrine of creation, or of human life; or if they have they only pay lip-service to it; and they do not in general expect to have any non-religious consequences flowing from their beliefs. They are 'separatistic' in the worst sense of that word; not concerned only with their doctrinal purity but with cutting themselves off as much as possible from everyday life. It is in this crucial respect that the evangelical faith differs in character from the cults.

CULTURAL CONTRACTION

This is likely to provoke two comments. First, that contemporary evangelicalism is not recognisably like this; it is individualistic, lives on religious sensations, has little interest in doctrine or in human life. Indeed it would not be an exaggeration to say that many evangelicals are embarrassed by the very existence of the world. The answer to this is that to our shame all this [and a lot more like it] is true, but that evangelicals who behave in this way do not do justice to the logic of their faith. They are living below par; for a faith that has a doctrine of creation and of human nature will have implications for the quality of human life. If these implications are not seen, and no concern is expressed about them, this does not mean that the implications do not exist.

The second comment is likely to be this. You say that the faith has implications for the whole of life and that the gospel is best understood when this point is firmly grasped. But what are these implications ? What follows for us in 1968 ? This is a good question, and I do not want to dodge it. But the answer is painful. For a hundred years or so in this country few have paid the slightest attention to studying these questions. In a cultural situation that has changed out of all recognition the evangelical world-view of a century ago [with all its faults] has become fragmented. There are many causes of this - the inroads made into biblical authority by higher criticism, into the doctrine of creation by Darwin, into the biblical view of God and the world by philosophical idealism, and so on. The result is that while life has gone on around us the thinking of Christian people has stopped. Evangelicals - due no doubt to a praiseworthy concern to defend the essence of the gospel message - have in the meantime become culturally contracted. So the painful answer is that, having stopped thinking, we have little to say about the implications of the faith for today's or tomorrow's world. We are to think, and we are to expect answers to our probings, for we are God's creatures and this is God's world. But evangelicals have long since stopped thinking, and have paid
the price; we cannot appraise or influence affairs as we should, we cannot counsel our young people or channel their energies constructively. We have stagnated, and many of us have become proud of it.

THE REFORMED FAITH

In this difficult situation the Reformed faith has a unique contribution to make to a return to a living evangelicalism. Let me try and make good this claim by relating certain features of the Reformed faith - in a very sketchy way - to the needs of our situation outlined above.

British evangelicalism, as we have seen, values the quick return, the tangible, the personal, the sensational. The Reformed faith, following Scripture, places emphasis not on these things but on the divine decree and control and purpose. Fundamental to Scripture and to Reformed thinking is the fact that God has a plan. How does this help ? By giving to the people of God a calmness of spirit and serenity of mind; by enabling them to take a long-term view and encouraging them to put their minds to work in the fulfilling of God's purposes for His creation.

Consider, secondly, the link between creation and redemption. Redemption, the Reformers constantly show us, can only be understood if we grasp that it is man made in God's image [but fallen] who is redeemed and restored into fellowship with his Maker by the gospel. Redemption is not to be seen primarily as an experience [though it involves experiences] but a gracious restoration. This means that human life for the Christian is not a search for an endless succession of religious feelings, but the life of a restored human being.

Third, there is the Reformed teaching about the world. For the Reformers 'the world' was not taboo, a place to be shunned, but a battle field. It is God's created order, and it is the Christian's place under God to seek the full restoration of God's image in man by living creatively according to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Christian man will strive for the replenishment and exercise of his gifts,becoming again, as the newly-created Adam was, a divine workman.

FULFILLING OUR CALLINGS

It is in these ways, and others not indicated, that the Reformers show us that the biblical faith cannot be divorced from thought or from life, but has implications for both which it is the Christian's divinely appointed task to work out. There is no recipe here for quick and easy solutions to life's many problems but a mandate for creative [or re-creative] Christian thinking.

Is evangelicalism a cult? Not when it is seen to be true to itself and to the logic of its belief. Unhappily this is not the case at present; evangelicals have become side-tracked. We must take up again the foundational principles of our faith and trace out then: implications for our lives. It is in this way that under God we fulfil our callings as Christian men and women and display the gospel in its many-sidedness."

Few would call the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, an evangelical and he certainly demonstrated he wasn't by his performance in debate with Atheist, Richard Dawkins, on ABC Television's Q & A program last Monday night. The Archbishop has a pitiful doctrine on Creation - assigning Adam and Eve to mythology - and the rest of his doctrine, consequently, slides into nothingness.

Sydney Episcopalians should note the course they are directing hearers and readers to as they present a flaky doctrine of Creation today.

Sam Drucker

A Plea to Undergraduates of Moore Theological College.

I was reassured by recent reading of an article titled "The Right of Private Judgement" by Paul Helm in the December 1972 edition of the Banner of Truth Journal.

The article had its emphasis on the roots of the Reformation and the error of church traditions at cost to the Word of God. However, there were some statements by Helm, some forty years ago, which have relevance for Christians today within the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, particularly those who are submitting themselves to lecturers of Moore Theological College.

Helm, at one point, had this to say:

"For the Reformers faith is faith in Christ, and in the Word of Christ. They were not haunted by the thought, as much of modern Protestantism is, that the Bible may obscure Christ's Word, or that a man may mistake trust in his Bible for trust in Christ. Scripture is Christ's Word and there Christ is faithfully pictured. 'Faith in Christ', 'faith in Scripture, the Word of Christ' - for the Reformers these expressions came to much the same thing.

The Reformers view of Scripture as sufficient and clear must be borne in mind. Its essential meaning is plain to all. It does not contain any 'small print'. It cannot be added to, or subtracted from. By contrast, faith in Christ's Church (given the Roman view of the Church) must be implicit. For faith is faith in whatever the Church might at any time be disposed to teach. Trusting the Church involves signing an intellectual blank cheque."

A new year is under way and new students have entered Moore Theological College in the belief they are Protestant and Reformed. If they are inclined to believe that the theological institution they have entered is fully trustworthy they may very well just absorb and regurgitate errors of the day. In this they expose themselves to being caught in a drift to worldliness something akin to the errors of Rome.

On the matter of Origins I urge students to be constantly looking to their Lord Jesus Christ Incarnate - the things He said, the things He did. The more they gaze upon Him the more they will see in Him confirmation of Him who created all things in the beginning in six days. A plain view of the Son of God affirms a plain reading of the Word written in Genesis 1. When hearing of things contrary to this revelation of Him, question it, weigh it, ask yourself, "Is this the Jesus Christ recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?" Surely, you will find that on the basis of all they saw and heard these writers would fall under the category today called Biblical Creationist.

How else could you account for John's experience recorded at John 20:8 and for him to later write the words of John 1:1-3?

Please, please, don't succumb to the undermining of confidence in the Word written as the Church, via its lecturers at Moore Theological College, is disposed at this time to teach.

Sam Drucker

Contending With the Spirit of the Age.

Many have written about authors of significant influence on Western Culture in the late Nineteenth Century. These works maintain influence today. These are the authors of novels (fiction) whose world view they impressed either discretely or overtly upon their works and came to change the moral standard of Great Britain and, ultimately, Western Culture. Surely, the 'spirit of the age' alone would guide such a purposeful and collective outcome.

Some key influences were Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and others such as Leonard Woolf, Leslie Stephen and Edmund Gosse.

It is amazing to observe the close Christian influence several of these people had yet it was to no avail in preventing them pursuing a path of unbelief - Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, had been an ordained Clergyman before renouncing Holy Orders; R L Stevenson's father was a pious Christian man who constantly appealed to his son for change; Hardy's parents were regular church attenders and Hardy spent many years under the influence of Henry Moule, Vicar of Fordington when, in 1875, an 'Awakening' broke out in the parish; contrary to what Gosse wrote about his father in Father and Son there is credible evidence elsewhere to show his father was a pious and gentle Christian man. Weeds arise in the best kept gardens as unbelief arises amid the best of opportunities.

Dr Wilbur Smith, speaking at Westminster Chapel in 1952, said:

"A few months ago, the New York Times issued a fifty-page brochure, four columns to a page, entitled 'A Century of Books', in which the editors gathered together reviews, appearing in this distinguished paper from 1851 to 1951, of one hundred and thirteen notable books, some of which continue to have world-wide influence, and a few, influence over millions. In carefully studying these pages, I am again impressed with the antichristian or non-christian position of the majority of these authors, in fact, apart from Hawthorne, I could not recognize one writer, man or woman, who could be called a believing Christian; and not one book among all those referred to here was written to extol Christian virtues, to honour the Lord Jesus, or to expound the Word of God. What can be the result of allowing these volumes to determine one's values but a hardening of the hearts of men against the Christian faith."

Writing some years earlier in A Study of Religious Thought in England" (1933) Clement C. J. Webb said:

"The true enemy of religion in the modern world is not philosophy or science; it is purely the secular habit of mind."

Such views need to be borne in mind when Biblical Creationists present the Acts 17 approach to evangelism. Yes, there are plenty of instances of the presentation of the Creator and consequent argument against evolution which has paved the way to presenting, and a person receiving, Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. But be prepared. There are many non-believers for whom the argument for evolution is just part of their defence for unbelief. The root cause is a secular habit of mind and no matter the strength of the case for a Creator these people will not believe. In each instance of you demolishing a particular aspect of their argument from science they sidestep to another aspect and on it goes. Their secular habit of mind is the driving force and this itself under influence of the spirit of the age.

This is not meant to discourage what some call "Creation Evangelism" for, as I have said, it does bear fruit. I simply want Biblical Creationists to be mindful it is not a 'cure all' and to be mindful of what is in play.

Sam Drucker

An Honest Woman

I heard a story tonight arising from Biblical Creationist ministry at Penrith Anglican Church a couple of weeks ago.

A woman went to one of the morning services of firm mind that Biblical Creationists had it all wrong. She sat stoicly through the service and was later heard to say that she accepted a lot of what the speaker said but could not accept the six day creation.

She returned to a later service in the day, sat through it and went up to the speaker afterward and apologised to him for going to the services determined not to believe what the speaker had to say. She said she had just completed her Doctorate in Education, was convinced of the argument for evolution and had also been criticising her Niece who was home-schooling children and teaching them Biblical Creationism. The woman was now trying to work out how to apologise to her Niece.

It says a lot about the impressive character of the woman that, on the day, she was willing and able to evaluate the case for Biblical Creationism and see the frailty of the evolution argument. What a wonderful woman! What an honest woman! A Berean, for sure!

I wish her well in her relations with her Niece and her growth as a Christian, trusting implicitly in the Word of God.

Sam Drucker

Every Thing Old is New Again.

Both six-day creationists and scientific materialists approach Genesis 1 as if the original author had intended to narrate the mechanics of creation in historical prose. I believe this is a mistaken, literalistic reading. For over a century now, a great many biblical historians have detected in the Bible’s opening words a style other than simple prose and a purpose other than to explain how the universe was made. These two issues, genre and purpose, are critical for understanding this foundational portion of the Jewish and Christian Bible. In what follows, then, I want to unpack what many modern scholars are saying about these issues and demonstrate that, properly understood, Genesis 1 teaches nothing scientifically problematic for the modern enquirer. I emphasize the adverb ‘scientifically’, since there is plenty in Genesis 1 that is theologically and existentially confronting. That is the aim of the text, as I understand it.

Such is extract of a writer's opening words in his publication "The Genesis of Everything" posted to the ISCAST website in 2008.

I couldn't help but be reminded of that demolition job on evangelical Christianity's position on Origins when recently reading part of the writings of William Henry Green, a contemporary of Charles and A. A. Hodge on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary in the late Nineteenth Century. The highly respected Theologian, E. J. Young, said the following of Green - "Green's learned works, without doubt, constitute the most thorough and convincing refutation of the development hypothesis. The Church of God may ever be grateful that He has given to her such an apologete!"

I provide herewith some extracts from William Henry Green's work "The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch" (1896):

"The study of the Bible on its purely literary side has many and strong attractions for men of letters. But, with all the admiration that was bestowed upon it [The Bible], the unique character of its claims was lost sight of. Its inspiration and divine authority did not enter into the account. The immediate voice and hand of God, which rule in the whole, were overlooked.

[Yet] There are three evident indications of God's immediate presence, which pervade the Scriptures from beginning to end, and are inwrought into its entire structure, and with which they must reckon who recognize in its contents merely that which is natural and human. These are miracle, prophecy, and revealed truth.

Three different methods have been devised for getting rid of these troublesome factors. One is that of a scoffing deism, which sets aside the supernatural by imputing it to deception and priestcraft. It is all held to be traceable to impositions practised upon the credulity of the uninstructed vulgar in order to exalt the ministers of religion in their eyes, perhaps for the promotion of selfish ends, perhaps with the worthier motive of obtaining sanction for useful institutions or gaining credence for valuable teachings, which they could not otherwise have been induced so easily to receive.

A second mode of dealing with the supernatural, without admitting its reality, is that of the old rationalistic exegesis. This regards it simply as oriental exaggeration. It is looked upon as the habit of the period to think and speak in superlatives, and to employ grandiloquent figures and forms of expression. In order to ascertain the actual meaning of the writer these must be reduced to the proportion of ordinary events. Thus Eichhorn, the father of the higher criticism, had no difficulty in accepting the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and defending its credibility, while at the same time he discarded the miraculous. This work, he contended, must be interpreted in accordance with the spirit of the age to which it belonged. Its poetic embellishments must not be mistaken for plain prose, and its bold figures must not be converted into literal statements. When the oriental imagery is duly estimated, and the elaborate drapery in which the imaginative writer has dressed his thought is stripped off, it will be found that his real meaning does not transcend what is purely natural. There was nothing miraculous about the plagues of Egypt; it was only an annus mirabilis, a year of extraordinary occurrences, remarkable in their number and severity, but wholly traceable to natural causes. There was nothing miraculous in the passage of the Red Sea, or the events at Sinai, or in what took place during the forty years in the desert. The apparently miraculous features belong merely to the style of description, not to the facts described. There was in this no intentional falsehood, no attempt to deceive. It was the well-understood way of writing and speaking in that age. And thus the supernatural is evaporated by hermeneutical rules. But this un-natural style of interpretation could not long maintain itself. The attempt to reduce heathen myths to intelligible history, and to bring down the miracles of the Bible to the level of ordinary occurrences, proved alike abortive. The hypothesis of rhetorical exaggeration, fashionable as it was at one time, was accordingly abandoned. The rule of common-sense must be applied to Scripture as to any other book, that the writer must be understood to mean what he says, not what some interpreter may fancy that he ought to have said.

The third mode of banishing the supernatural from the Bible is by subjecting it to the processes of the higher criticism. This is the most plausible as well as the most effective method of accomplishing this result. It is the most plausible because the animus of the movement is concealed, and the desired end is reached not by aiming at it directly and avowedly but as the apparently incidental consequence of investigations pursued professedly for a different purpose. And it is the most effective because it supplies a complete antidote for the supernatural in each of its forms. Every reported miracle is met by the allegation that the record dates centuries after its supposed occurrence, leaving ample time for the legendary amplification of natural events. Every prediction which has been so accurately fulfilled that it cannot be explained away as a vague anticipation, shrewd conjecture, or fortunate coincidence, is met by the allegation that it was not committed to writing till after the event. Revelations of truth in advance of what the unaided faculties of men could be supposed to have attained to must be reconstructed into accordance with the requirements of a gradual scheme of development. The stupendous miracles of the Mosaic period, the far-reaching predictions of the Pentateuch, and its minute and varied legislation are all provided
for by the critical analysis, which parts it into separate documents and assigns these documents severally to six, eight, and ten centuries after the exodus from Egypt.

These critical results are based professedly on purely literary grounds, on diction and style and correspondence with historical surroundings. And yet he who traces the progress of critical opinion will discover that these are invariably subordinated to the end of neutralizing the supernatural, and that they are so managed as to lead up to this conclusion.

They are in acknowledged variance with the historical truth of much of the Bible, and require, as is freely confessed, the complete reconstruction of the sacred history. They require us to suppose that the course of events and the progress of divine revelation must throughout have been very different from the representations of the Bible.

Within a very few years professedly evangelical men have ventured upon the hazardous experiment of attempting a compromise in this matter. They propose to accept these hypotheses in spite of their antibiblical character, in spite of their incompatibility with the historical truth of the grave questions which they raise respecting the fallibility of our Lord own teaching; and they expect to retain their Christian faith with on such modifications as these newly adopted hypotheses may require. They are now puzzling themselves over the problem of harmonizing Christ's sanction given to false views respecting the Old Testament with implicit faith in him as a divine teacher. And some of them in their perplexity over this enigma come perilously near impairing the truth of his claims. Would it not be wiser for them to revise their own ill-judged alliance with the enemies of evangelical truth, and inquire whether Christ's view of the Old Testament may not, after all, be the true view?"

Perhaps with only the exception of the third method of diluting the Bible of its historical truth, the author of The Genesis of Everything, takes a similar route to the proponents of Higher Criticism more than a century ago. But then even the third method is not without some relevance because the device of timeliness is again used to undermine the historical narrative of Scripture, albeit in the subject author's case the expiration of time since the Creation event and the influence of the current world's view on the reading of Genesis. For that author (and many who endorse his paper) literary devices, alleged contemporary Middle Eastern writings as well as early Christian and non-Christian writers strongly influenced by an allegorical approach to Scripture are cause to apply a higher critical hermeneutic to the Creation account.

Upon entering the Twenty-First Century we find Higher Criticism as healthy as ever and making another assault on the evangelical church.

I write this in the spirit of 2 Timothy 2:25-26.

Sam Drucker

A Light for Our Time

Three cheers for Penrith Episcopalian Church (Sydney Diocese) who I understand hosted Biblical Creationist ministry today.

Word has reached me to say the good folk up there dedicated the five services normally held on Sundays to hearing the message of how the Word of God can be trusted entirely and, specifically for today, the Word of God recorded in Genesis Chs. 1-11. Such an uncommon event for Episcopalian churches. Well blow me down!

I have to go on second hand reporting but I understand the message was well received with no dissensions, the resident priest fully on side, helpful questions in Q&A (one saying "I had these questions all my Christian life which no-one could answer but they have been answered today!") and much interest in resources available to help Christians defend the faith in which they believe.

This all presents as a blessing. May it be that seeds were sown for Biblical Creationist ministry to come to the aid of believers in other Sydney Episcopalian Churches in Sydney Diocese.

Sam Drucker

Apostasy From The Gospel

Had occasion on Saturday to attend a 'Truth of the Gospel' Conference at St John's Park Baptist Church. Keynote speakers were Iain Murray, Editorial Director, Banner of Truth Trust, and Mike Trollope, Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. Much to encourage the soul, not the least being the hymn singing in resounding voice.

I thought I would share headline points and a few anecdotes of Iain Murray's talk on Apostasy:

Signs of Apostasy

Self Confidence of a Wrong Kind

Widespread Worldiness in the Church

* Satan seeks to blur the distinction between the world and the church

* Luther said the Flood came not so much because of world corruption but because of compromise of Seth's righteous line with ungodly line of Cain

Poor Church Attendance

* If morning service is excellent people will desire to return for evening or other service

* Horatius Bonar said "Old Rome died mad with music"

The Church Forgets the God of its Fathers


Causes of Apostasy

In Every Body of Christians there are those Unrenewed

The appeal for Success

Unbelief is Present in Every Christian

* The distinction is that a Christian is aware of the danger of unbelief and opposes it.

Conscience

* Conscience is God's watchman

* Apostasy arises when conscience is abused

When Satan Seduces

* Try the Spirits

Judgement of God

* Without the Holy Spirit Orthodoxy Dies

Our Duty in Times of Apostasy

Be Aware of Erroneous Teaching

Need to Emphasize Progress in a Christian's Holiness and Godliness

Uphold Brotherly Love Toward Those With Whom We Disagree


I hope I have done justice to the recording of Iain Murray's discourse.

The last point is one requiring more attention on this blogspot and I seek to bring myself under that injunction. Readers will see signs of Apostasy in faux Evangelicals of the present age. Certainly, one or two of the signs mentioned have been observed by this writer in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney.

Sam Drucker

How do you spot a liberal wolf in conservative clothing?

You ask them something pertaining to the historicity of the first 12 chapters of Genesis.

Here's an excerpt from a thread on the real Sydney Anglican Heretic Blog over yonder at the SAD. For the full comedic story, see here

Andrew: “Does a literal reading of Genesis 5:29-32 interpret Noah as being a real, historical man who lived on the earth?

Michael Jensen: “ It might do. It would depend what kind of literature we were talking about and what kind of relationship the ancient people understood to pertain between their texts and history.”

Andrew: “Michael, in reference to your comment at #5, the kind of literature I'm talking about is the book of Genesis in the Bible. I'm interested in your response to the following question:
Does a literal reading of Genesis 5:29-32 interpret Noah as being a real, historical man who lived on the earth?
Your response of, "it might do", is, in my opinion, a non-response.”

Michael Jensen: “It isn't a non-answer. It's a refusal to be drawn into a rather petty either-or. And a refusal to avoid the actual work of listening to the text itself. That isn't the end point of hermeneutics mind you; there's still more to do to put the text in the context of the whole Bible, too.

Andrew: “Either Genesis 5:29-32 is indicating that Noah was a real person like you or I, or it's indicating that he wasn't a real person like you or I. Or are there other options that I've overlooked on account of my lack of sophistication? I don't take you seriously, Michael.”

Michael: “As you wish Andrew. But this is indicative of precisely the problem of the literalist.

Genesis may be indicating the Noah was a real person, but that not be the main point of the text.

Job is perhaps a better example. I think a good case can be made for the claim that the plain reading of the book of Job is that he is a literary figure rather than a 'historical' one. Even if he was a historical figure, his historical existence is not really the point of the story. Saying 'There was a man named Job' is neither a claim to his existence (it could hardly be a claim for his non-existence) nor is not such a claim.”

Michael: “Well there's no 'one-size-fits-all' answer. Rather, to change the metaphor: you have to play each ball on its merits.

The person saying that about the Devil is making a theological mistake about accountability as much as a textual mistake. It seems to me that the Scriptural testimony over a number of books in different contexts about Satan is that he does exist.”

Andrew: “This article and this thread absolutely encapsulates why I left the Anglican church twelve years ago. One weekend, I realised that I couldn't listen to another academic sermon painted in different shades of grey. Alot of Anglican ministers preach with no power because half of you don't even believe what the Bible says.

Michael, I couldn't be bothered pitching any more questions to you. Your answers are equivocating and ridiculous.

On the positive side, this thread has exposed the foundational problem with the Sydney Anglican church (which has to do with the interpretation of the Bible) and I can guarantee you guys that until you fix this problem, your church is going nowhere. Certainly I won't join the Anglican church again until you guys fix this problem.”

Michael: “Thanks for Andrew.”

Andrew: “You guys want to invite people to church and tell them the gospel. Then, when they start to grow in their faith and start asking questions about the Bible, such as, "Did God speak to Moses in an audible voice?", "Was Noah a real person?", "Was there a real flood?", "Was Adam a real person?", you leave them hanging out to dry. It's a tragedy.

The Anglican church left me hanging out to dry but I was right and the Anglican church was and is WRONG. It's time to fix the problem so that you're not in this same position ANOTHER twenty years from now.”

Michael: “ I never said Noah wasn't a historical figure. What I am trying to do is to ask us to think about the nature of the text so we can read it better. That is: more 'literally' in the strict sense!

[And] Andrew - do you always shout louder when you don't like what you are hearing? I don't like have guns pointed at my head.”

And now we pause to meditate upon the inner, abstruse meaning of an interjection (and general suck up to the heir apparent) from our old-time SAD favourite, Intergalactic mutational gamma ray Dave Lankshear: “ [Hey] Andrew, sadly I think it is meaningless. Taunting someone as not believing the bible because you cannot comprehend their interpretation of it is meaningless: you are attacking something that may not exist, a shallow straw-man of your own construction. Slow down, breathe a little, and try and think about what Michael is actually saying.”

Michael: “The statement that Moore lecturers think Genesis is poetry (as opposed to describing in literary form events that actually took place) is not correct.”

Roll forward a year or so and here we have an example of Michael's evolution: "This meshes with the idea I have had for a project on theological anthropology which would engage with the great literary genres as alterative or overlapping mythoi in comparison and contrast to the Biblical mythos."

Got that guys? I know I haven't. And I guess, even if I could understand what he's saying, will it help me evangelise?