Okay, we are live. Welcome to today's program. I am Patrick Hines. I'm the pastor of Ridgewell Heights Presbyterian Church here in beautiful, lovely, sunny, but Arctic freezing cold Kingsport, Tennessee. This is the coldest weather I can remember ever experiencing in this place where I live here, where it's supposed to be warmer than it was in Ohio. And it certainly has been that, but it is just freezing cold lately. We've been having this Arctic blast. Yeah, it feels like 26 outside looking at my phone. The low of 12 today, and it was like single digits yesterday. Today I want to talk about unity. I want to talk about the gospel. In R.C. Sproul's book, Faith Alone, the Evangelical Doctrine of Justification, it says this early on in the book, quote, the unity that was once tacitly assumed to exist among professed evangelicals does not, in fact, exist. One repercussion of ECT, that's Evangelicals and Catholics together, that document, is that it has revealed a serious disunity among evangelicals on the question of justification and the nature of Rome. Charles Colson is convinced that evangelicals who participated in drafting ECT gave nothing away and did not compromise the gospel. Others, including myself, believe that the document seriously compromises the gospel and negotiates away the very heart of historical evangelicalism. I may be wrong, this is still Sproul, I may be wrong, Colson may be wrong, one thing is absolutely certain, there is serious disagreement about this question. Prison Fellowship, that was Charles Colson's ministry, being someone who spent some time in jail, then came to know Christ, and then started Prison Fellowship. The quotation goes on, Prison Fellowship clearly affirms Sola Fide, justification by faith, alone in its doctrinal statement. How does this square with its president's signing of ECT? Likewise, I wonder if Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright's ministry, affirms justification by faith alone as an essential element of the gospel. The shadow is now cast not merely over evangelical organizations and institutions, but over the doctrine of justification itself. There is confusion over the doctrine with respect to both its content and its essential character. Its content and essential character. When ECT was announced in the press, Timothy George was quoted in Christianity Today as saying that the Reformation doctrine of Sola Fidea was duly affirmed by the document. An editorial in the Southern Florida Baptist Magazine likewise declared that the document affirmed the Reformation doctrine of justification. I found such statements surprising when ECT never once even mentions justification by faith alone, nor affirms it in any way, says Sproul here. The light of the Reformation is waning. The historic view is in danger of being eclipsed by the current confusion about it. Perhaps the best thing that will come from ECT is that the controversy it provokes may result in a fresh study of justification and in a reaffirmation of the Reformation. Controversies usually generate much heat, but out of that heat, the light often emerges. The light of the biblical gospel is more important than historical alliances. Okay, let's chew on that sentence for a moment here. The light of the gospel is more important than historical alliances. I want to say it's also more important than friendship. It's also more important than relationships. It's also more important than denominational affiliation. It's more important than your life. It's more important than my life. It's more important than my marriage, than the souls of my children. It is far more important than any manifestation of co-belligerency on social and political matters. Thank you, Dr. Sproul. Appreciate that you're, you know, you understood that. Nobody today apparently does. The gospel is more important than co-belligerency. Then saying, okay, well, Chesterton and Tolkien, okay, they were Roman Catholics, but, but they're really good on social issues. If they're wrong on the gospel, we can't affirm them as Christians, can we? No. Says Sproul, the gospel is the variable power of God to save. We do not live in the 16th century. The problems we face are in many ways different from those faced by Christians in that era. Surely the fierce opposition against the church today makes it desirable for Christians to join together whenever possible. The call to unity was no idle prayer by our Lord. The goal of Christian unity is compelling in every age and in every generation. Yet the gospel does not change. What was the power of God unto salvation in the first century is still the power of God unto salvation today. Our unity is to be rooted in one Lord, one faith, one baptism. This is genuine unity. This is genuine unity that can never be achieved if we hold to different faiths. purpose of this book, Faith Alone, is to explore the doctrine of justification in its biblical and historical context. And I want to say that R.C. Sproul's book, Faith Alone, is a masterpiece of theology. I've listened to it many times on Audible. I've read through it. I'm actually reading through it with an intern here, Brother Ryan Kaiser, who's been doing preaching here and stuff and really learning. learning a lot from reading that book with someone. I wanted to read some other quotations from another book he wrote. He wrote Faith Alone. He was actually, Sproul was under contract to write the book Faith Alone just to do a book on justification. And in the glorious and hopeful providence of God, the ECT controversy started. Now the ECT controversy was Chuck Colson and a bunch of other like 19 or 20 evangelical Protestants got together with 19 or 20 Roman Catholics, and they sat down and wrote this document, and it was the same old thing, the same old thing that, you know, later on the Manhattan Declaration tried to do. We need to present a united front against all these social evils. which is a fool's errand. It is a fool's errand that accomplished nothing, never will accomplish anything. Being a united front with people of different religions like that, it doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't help anything to do that because the only thing that can bring social transformation is sola fide, is the gospel, the thing that nobody seems to care about today. Before I read some more quotes from, I was looking at my Kindle version of getting the gospel right here. I just got a lot of stuff highlighted in it that I highlighted in here. Yeah, those are my highlights. One of the thorns in my side, and people have actually got some emails this week from folks that have listened to my Federal Vision videos thanking me for that, and their churches are being seduced into this stuff. They don't realize how bad it is. And I was thinking about the fact that really from day one, when that started, 2002, the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Pastors Conference, I think there were guys in the PCA Presbytery in this area who were there when that conference happened. And I was thinking, I've heard clips and I've read transcripts and I've read lots of books by some of the speakers and things like that, but I'd never actually heard the talks of the original conference. So I did a Google search, uh, original Auburn Avenue Presbyterian church, federal vision talks and boom, they popped right up and I had to buy them big 20 bucks, but I downloaded all of them and I started listening to them. I started listening to these talks and I started with Steve Schlissel and Schlissel's talk. is so bad, is so filled with gospel heresy that I cannot believe that the other speakers didn't rise up and run them out of town. But I noticed in the list of MP3s, R.C. Sproul Jr. responded to Schlissel. And I was like, I didn't know they did that at that original conference. I pulled that mp3. Listened about the first 20 minutes of it. And it's terrible too. I mean, if you could listen to Schlissel's talk, and I'm actually, I'm gonna do some podcasting on this. I'm gonna put out some, you know how I do the NT Wright Gospel Horror Files? I'm gonna do some Federal Vision Horror Files, because Schlissel, Steve Schlissel's hatred of the gospel is just iconic. I mean, it's epic. He is worse than any New Perspective writers I've ever read. He's worse than any Roman Catholic apologists I've ever read over the years. I mean, he is one of the worst. He was texting me. Yeah, I can get an office drop. Anyway, just making sure there's nothing serious. If there's a text, I just want to make sure my house is not on fire or something like that. So I'm going to be listening to the original lectures at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church's Pastors Conference that started the whole mess. And listening to Schlissel's talk, I mean, I was listening to it while I was on an elliptical machine. And, you know, if you push both sides of your phone, you can take a screenshot. I wanted to get a screenshot of all the of the timestamps where all these horrible quotes are. And I'm sitting there, and it's like every three seconds I'm clicking it again to get another screenshot. Because everything coming out of his mouth is bad. Everything he's saying about Christianity, about the Bible, about the Gospel, about the Reformed faith. Everything he's saying. And I finally just hit me. This whole talk is terrible, and I'm chewing up all the memory on my phone by taking screenshots, like picture after picture after picture. I've got like 40 picture pictures, and then I realized, okay, I might just need to play the whole talk and then respond to it. But Junior Sproul's response to Schlissel really isn't a response yet. He's not really been critical of him. He's more really just kind of sucking up to him and trying to flatter him. And I'm like, that is just unbelievable. From day one, when I heard the clips from that Auburn Avenue conference, I knew immediately, this is not just, this isn't a different trajectory of Reformed covenant theology. This is heresy. This is heresy of the highest order. And R.C. Sproul, when he wrote Faith Alone, this book was published, as I recall, it was published in 1994, I think it was. 1994. And the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference is eight years later. What Sproul says here is exactly right. The unity that we used to think existed in Reformed churches on this issue, on the gospel, justification by faith alone, that unity does not exist. And there are people who claim to be reformed and hold to these standards who deny sola fide, justification by faith alone. They deny it. All the while saying they affirm it, they just redefine all the key terms and things like that. So what about unity? What about unity? One of my favorite Luther quotes, he said famously, unity wherever possible, but truth at all costs. And I say, yeah. unity wherever possible, but truth at all costs. Especially, especially when it comes to the biblical gospel. You know, in his talk, Schlissel just openly mocks the idea of justification by faith alone. And he quotes scripture just like a Roman Catholic. The only place the Bible talks about faith alone is James chapter 2. You see then that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone. St. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 13, if I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, I'm nothing. And Galatians 5, 6, neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love. I'm like, you sound like a convert to Catholicism. I've heard that presentation a hundred times from heretics and apostates. All that shows is you have no sensitivity to biblical context and don't care about doing exegesis properly or handling the Word of God with care or with respect. And I thought, you know, after listening to Schlissel's ranting against the gospel and his, oh, just gushing all over the New Perspective writers and N.T. Wright and how wonderful he is and everything else, I thought, well, Junior Sproul responded to Schlissel. Let's see if he refused him. No, I'm not done with Sproul's, Junior Sproul's talk yet. But I'm just like, man, that is just horrifying to listen to. That conference was an atrocity. And the thing is, if someone could listen to that conference or even have attended that conference and they don't see anything significantly wrong with it, I would question whether that person's a Christian myself, really. So what about unity? Here's the main point I just want to make, though. I'll state it simply and straight up right up front before I kind of elaborate more on this. Unity that is not grounded upon and based in a correct understanding and a biblical understanding of the biblical gospel is not unity at all. It's fake. And when the signatories of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document got together, and the Protestant and Roman Catholics, and they all sat down and said, well, we have unity in the faith. We have unity in the faith because of our ability to affirm this statement, that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. And Sproul looks at that and says, wow, What did you leave out of that statement? The word alone, three times? Because what is the biblical doctrine that we are confessionally bound to by all the reformed confessions? Not we're justified by grace through faith because of Christ, but that we're justified by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. Now, R.C. Sproul, in his book, Faith Alone, And his book, Faith Alone, came up with a wonderful illustration. And he knew that this analogy was going to offend people, but it's a good analogy. Listen to Dr. Sproul here. Quote, only when the parties are pressed for further clarification do the real and sharp differences between them become clear. Let me illustrate by an analogous scenario that some will undoubtedly find offensive. Suppose I met with a group of Mormon leaders to draft a joint statement entitled, Evangelicals and Mormons Together, The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium. In this document, we declare the following, quote, we affirm that Christ is preexistent and preeminent. All who accept that Christ is preexistent and preeminent are brothers and sisters in Christ. Evangelicals and Mormons are brothers and sisters in Christ. Evangelicals and Mormons ought not to proselytize from each other's communions. Suppose we then labor the point that though we have reached, through prayer and study, significant agreement, nevertheless there are still many points of disagreement between us. These points have not been resolved and may never be resolved short of heaven. Suppose we then list ten points of ongoing dispute and disagreement as illustrative but not exhaustive. We declare that there are still other points of serious difference that are not explicitly mentioned. Our explicit list makes no mention of the deity of Christ, the cardinal issue between historic Mormonism and evangelicalism. Okay, so the parallel here is obvious. Even ECT made those very statements and said, yeah, we still have differences, the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, we still have differences. And those differences are significant and they're serious and they even list them out. But missing from their list is the gospel. Justification by faith alone. It's not affirmed, it's not denied, it's not even listed as an ongoing point of dispute. Okay, now listen to the analogy as it continues here. Our explicit list makes no mention of the deity of Christ, the cardinal issue between historic Mormonism and evangelicalism. Indeed, nowhere in our lengthy document is the deity of Christ even mentioned. How would the evangelical community react? Our answer to this question requires speculation. Indeed, some may be delighted by the joint statement and take offense at any suggestion that the Mormon Church is not a true church. Others, certainly most evangelicals, would be outraged. They would ask, how can you declare unity with the Mormons when they deny the deity of Christ? Is not the deity of Christ an essential affirmation of biblical Christianity? Is not the deity of Christ integral to the affirmations of the great ecumenical councils that are a necessary part of Catholic universal Christianity? These protests would be loud and clear. How can this scenario be analogous to the evangelical Roman Catholic joint statement? I said that the analogy would offend some people, especially those who wrote and signed the document. Surely they will consider the analogy unfair and unduly polemical. They will be quick to point out that whatever separates Roman Catholicism from Evangelicalism, no matter how serious it is, it is not comparable to the deity of Christ. Analogies are used for purposes of comparison. They're not identities or equivalents. When they compare apples to oranges, they break down, and they break down badly. No analogy has a one-to-one correspondence. An analogy points out a likeness or a similarity between two things. Before I endeavor to show the likeness, likenesses in the analogy, let me first consider the dissimilarities. First, the Roman Catholic Church clearly and unambiguously affirms the deity of Christ and has consistently affirmed that this doctrine is essential to Christianity. Second, though Rome does have a second source of divine revelation and tradition, it does not base its doctrines in the Book of Mormon. Other obvious differences need not be noted. It is the similarity that is crucial for our discussion. Now listen close to this. Whoa, back away from the mic a little bit. Okay. Here, let me do this. Breaking up a little bit. All right. All right, where did I leave off here? Okay, it is the similarity that is crucial for our discussion. The chief point of contact and the analogy here between Roman evangelicalism and now evangelicalism and Mormonism is that both of them reject an essential truth for salvation. This statement assumes two things. One is that justification by faith alone is an essential truth for salvation. So I want to see the hands of anyone here watching on the channel over here. Sorry, I haven't said hi to everybody yet. But do you think justification by faith alone, not that it's a central truth, but that it's an essential of Christianity? I do. I do. Justification by faith alone is not only an essential, it's really the, THE essential. And I think the doctrine of God is also an essential. You gotta get that right. You gotta have the right God and the right gospel. Okay? Y'all think that justification by faith alone is an essential truth of the Christian faith? Would it bother you? Let me give a quotation from Steve Schlissel. There are some Protestants and reformers who think that justification by faith alone is the doctrinal article upon which the church stands or falls. Hooey and hogwash, he said at that conference, the Federal Vision Conference. And I say, no, Steve, you're the one who's Mr. Hooey and hogwash. That is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls, because it's the doctrine by which we stand or fall. It's any central. Good, good, good. I see. There's Paul, there's Mountain Red, there's Brother Rich, there's Susan, there's Rob Bogler. Good, good, good. All right. Okay. Oh, someone's asking, can you talk about Baptist covenant theology, 1689 federalism again? Seems like most outside the view have a bitter taste in their mouth from Brandon Adams. I know no comment. I did a debate with that guy with Brandon Adams. You can go find it I Think I think he does have a link to it somewhere on the cavernous Links and of his website it is hard to find though on there, but his Huge written response to me is on there on his website I would have written a response to him, but he didn't give me anything to revive so there's nothing I could say in response to his presentation because interact with. Okay, anyway, sorry, you are distracting me, whoever you are. If these assumptions are accurate, then the point of similarity between Roman Mormonism is that both deny an essential truth of Christianity. Some may argue that justification by faith alone is not essential, or that it's not as essential as the deity of Christ, and therefore they take umbrage at the comparison. It is questionable to debate degrees of essentiality. If a doctrine is essential, it is of the essence and cannot be rejected without departing from essential Christianity. Most Christians, I suppose, would agree that the nature of the gospel is essential to Christianity, but in all probability would as readily agree to this as would agree that the deity of Christ is essential. That is why I stated the argument in conditional terms. I said, if justification by faith alone is essential for salvation, and if Rome rejects justification by faith alone, then the conclusion follows by resistless logic that Rome rejects an essential truth of Christianity. Okay, it goes on from there. But the point is, the point is, without justification by faith alone, not only do you not have unity with other believers, if you don't have that doctrine, you don't have a church. You don't have a Christian church then. You don't have a true Christian church without the true gospel. And that was the thing about Schlissel's talk, and I need to play clips from that and do some, some federal vision horror files, but he very crassly teaches a gospel of you're justified before God by your faithful obedience to the law. I mean, his presentation was the most graceless, Christless, crossless, gospel-less Presentation I've ever heard like I've never I mean even from liberals you'll get more gospel from a liberal than you would from Schlissel Schlissel's detestation of the gospel is just it's just epic in his talk and I I would have expected junior Sproul to issue a rather savage rebuke to him and call him to repentance, but I Unless he does that in the second half of his talk, he sure isn't doing that. He's talking about how masterful Schlissel's presentation was and everything else. It's just terrible. It's just an atrocity. It's terrible stuff. Okay, so I want to just read a little bit more here about unity. Does ECT, the Evangelicals and Catholics Together, remember, the main issue that Sproul had with the document was its statement, we have a common gospel and a common mission with Rome. that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ, because the word alone is omitted from that phrase three times. When the scriptures say we're justified by faith apart from works, that means faith alone. Faith alone is just a different way of saying that, okay? Does ECT ignore the crucial issue of justification by faith alone? We've already noted that the document nowhere mentions the doctrine explicitly. It does not appear in the positive affirmation concerning justification. It is not in the representative list of ongoing points of difference. In the third section of the document, we read this. We quote, listen, we know some of the differences and disagreements that must be addressed more fully and candidly in order to strengthen between us a relationship of trust and obedience to truth. Okay, so the Evangelical signers and the Roman Catholic signers, they listed, here are some ongoing points of dispute that we have. Ready? The Church as an integral part of the Gospel, or the Church as a communal consequence of the Gospel, the Church as visible communion or invisible fellowship of true believers, the sole authority of Scripture, the sole freedom of the individual Christian, or the magisterium of the community. The church as local congregation or universal communion. Several other things. Ministry ordered in apostolic succession or the priesthood of all believers. Sacraments and ordinances as symbols of grace or means of grace. The Lord's Supper as Eucharistic sacrifice or memorial meal. Remembrance of Mary and the saints or devotion to Mary. Baptism as sacrament of regeneration or testimony to regeneration. And that's it. That's all they've got left between them as far as any issues of significance. What's missing from that list? Justification by faith alone. It's not affirmed. It's not denied. It's not even listed as an ongoing point of dispute. And I remember Chuck Colson, Colson even said, if I'd been there in the 16th century, no reformation would have been necessary. That's nonsense, of course. Says Dr. Stroll, the list nowhere mentions justification by faith alone. Indeed, justification is not included at all. These points are further qualified in ECT. Quote, this account of differences is by no means complete, nor is the disparity between positions always so sharp as to warrant the or in the above formulations. I mean, it's like the eight million pound gorilla in the corner is the gospel. Okay, someone says, I just got on, who is he talking about Rome, Rome and Protestants and the evangelicals and Catholics together document. I'm talking about unity. What is the basis of unity? ECT stands for evangelicals and Catholics together. It was a big controversy long ago, but in the 1990s, and it caused a permanent breakup of fellowship. Among reformed well guys who said they were reformed turned out. They actually weren't I want to recommend this book to everybody's reading Evangelicalism divided by Ian Murray He chronicles the whole thing. He goes through the whole disco, all the stuff with J. I. Packer and the, uh, the different conferences and the different things that happened, uh, in the 1950s and sixties and seventies and all the documents and the church of England and all of its silliness and nonsense and all of its concessions to liberalism, all of its concessions to Rome. I mean, it's, it was a, it was a catastrophe. And you know something, reading the Federal Vision guys over the years, and now listening to Schlissel and listening to Junior Sproul, and I know I've gotta listen to Steve Wilkins and listen to Doug Wilson and everything else. I'm gonna say something that's probably gonna make people mad or uncomfortable, but this needs to be said. No one should ever have entrusted those men with the treasures of Reformed theology. No one should ever have entrusted the treasures that many paid for with their blood, the treasures of our great confessions of faith, which they openly mock. I mean, every other minute of Schlissel and Junior Sproul's talk is an attack on systematic theology, attacking systematic theology, just constantly attacking it. No one should ever have entrusted those men with the treasures of Reformed theology. It's kind of like giving a $300 calfskin Bible that's beautiful and has all the confessions in the back, giving that to a three-year-old and saying, here's your Bible. What would they do? They'd probably destroy it. They weren't up to the challenge. They weren't up to being able to be good stewards of those treasures. And they adulterated and destroyed them all. And you know that joint federal vision statement. I've been meaning to do a whole program on that. But this has been on my mind because unfortunately for me, that stuff is in this area. And so it just never goes away. It's just constantly having to deal with this issue. I want to read a couple of statements here. I had to let someone know. I do not have a unity of faith with this statement, the joint federal vision statement. I don't have a unity of faith with it. Here's several reasons why. The covenant of life. We affirm that Adam What? What would Adam have had faith in? Adam's not fallen. Adam's not a sinner that needs to be saved. Listen, Adam was created to progress. from immature glory to mature glory. But that glorification, too, would have been a gift of grace received by faith alone. That destroys the gospel, totally and completely. If you say that in the Garden of Eden, before the fall happened, that anything Adam would have gotten would have been by grace alone through faith alone, then what in the world do you think Jesus came into the world to do? Listen, Covenant of Works, very important concept. It's something I've had to defend and talk about many times because of this kind of theobabble. Covenant of Works is not a covenant of grace. That's why we call it the Covenant of Works. And that's also why we call the Covenant of Grace, the Covenant of Grace. Covenant of Works is a legal covenant. It is a legal covenant. And had Adam obeyed it, he would have earned by pure personal merit, the right to eat from the tree of life and live forever. Genesis 2 verse 9, the tree of life is in the midst of the garden, the larger catechism, question 20, the tree of life is given as a pledge of the covenant of works or covenant of life. Covenant of life, covenant of works are just two ways of referring to the same thing. When it's called a covenant of works, it's emphasizing the condition for eternal life. When it's called a covenant of life, it's emphasizing the reward for that obedience, the reward for works. Now listen, they go on to make it real clear of this heretical position. We deny that continuance in this covenant in the garden was in any way a payment for work rendered. Adam could forfeit or demerit the gift of glorification by disobedience, but the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam, conditioned upon Adam's moral exertions or achievements. In other words, Adam couldn't achieve anything. He couldn't, by his moral exertions, he could not put God in his debt. And I've heard many of these false teachers say that, well, if you say that man, even in his unfallen state, could earn something from God, that's a violation of the creator-creature distinction. I'm like, no, it's not. If man can't earn anything from God ever, he can never put God in his debt, even in his unfallen condition, before the fall happens, it would follow logically that man can't sin either. Oh, that's a violation of the greater creature distinction to say that man can sin, to say that his actions have actual significance in the sight of the infinite God. He's just a finite creature. Sauce for the gooses, sauce for the gander. You're going to say he could never earn anything or do anything for God or earn anything, then he can't sin either. But you certainly have to believe in sin. You know how we know sin is real? Because we're all going to die. We're all going to be dead. Because the wages of sin is death. Okay. Okay, it goes on there. Let's say there's a couple other things in there I wanted to talk about. Oh yeah, here we go. Union with Christ, and I'm still reading from the joint federal vision statement. I don't have unity of faith with this statement and could not have a Christian fellowship with anyone that agrees with it or signed it. We affirm Christ is all in all for us. Of course, so does Rome. And that his perfect sinless life, his suffering on the cross and his glorious resurrection are all credited to us. Sounds good, doesn't it? Christ is the new Adam, obeying God where the first Adam did not obey God. Sounds good. And Christ, as the new Israel, was baptized as the old Israel was, was tempted for 40 days as Israel was for 40 years. And as the greater Joshua, he conquered the land of Canaan in the course of his ministry. This means that through Jesus, on our behalf, Israel has finally obeyed God and has been accepted by him. We affirm not only that Christ is our full obedience, but also that through our union with Him, we partake of the benefits of His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement at the right hand of God the Father. Well, what in the world could you possibly have a problem with that? You see, folks, it's not what it does say. It's what it doesn't say. That's the problem. But thankfully, they have a denial here that shows you what they're leaving out. You ready? We deny that faithfulness to the gospel message requires any particular doctrinal formulation of the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. What matters is that we confess that our salvation is all of Christ and not from us. Well, then the Roman Catholic Church is the true church because they confess that our salvation is all of Christ. And Mormonism says that all of salvation is of Christ. And the Jehovah's Witnesses say that all of salvation is of Christ. It's all of Christ. Now, let me translate this for you. When they say, we deny that faithfulness to the gospel message requires any particular doctrinal formulation of the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. What that is code for, what they really mean by that is, we don't care if you deny it. And then you'll hear them say, well, there are divines at the Westminster Assembly who denied the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. And that's not true the way that they put it. that is not true, the way that they put it. There were individuals there who questioned the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ, fines, Gatteker, and twists, and they were refuted by Daniel Featley, by Thomas Goodwin. You can read the speeches, read the section of Jamie Fesco's book, The Theology of the Westminster Confession. they did not make a concession to those that denied the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. The reason was, the reason that they did that, that they said, we don't like this idea of this additional thing to the cross being added on as a separate and distinct act. They thought that that would eventually result in kind of a denial of justification by faith alone. They said, no, no, no, the cross work alone is our justification before God. And Featley and Goodwin said, no, that doesn't take into account everything scripture says about this. And in their statements, they refuted them. And what made it into the confession is that the obedience and the satisfaction of Christ are imputed to us. So don't give me, well, there were guys there that denied the imputation of the act of obedience to Christ. That just shows you don't understand what their concerns even were historically, that you've not done your homework on that. But again, let me translate what they're really saying. We deny that faithfulness to the gospel message requires any particular doctrinal formulation of the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. What they really mean by that is we don't care if you deny that. We don't care if you deny that. Now, you know, this idea of requiring, you know, some specific formulation of of a doctrine. I mean, surely we can all be Christians if we recognize that we don't need to agree on our formulation of every particular doctrine. Okay? Listen to Harry Emerson Fosdick. Harry Emerson Fosdick raised the same question about the virgin birth of Christ. Now, let me ask you all a question. Is the virgin birth of Christ an essential truth of the Christian faith? I think it is. I raised my hand on that one, yeah. The virgin birth of Christ, if Jesus Christ had a human father, there is no salvation. The virgin conception and then virgin birth of Christ is an essential of the Christian faith. Okay? It's an essential of the Christian faith. And without that, you don't have the gospel, you don't have the true Christian faith. Now, what if someone said, okay, well, I just hold to a different theory of the virgin birth than you do. I would wonder, well, how many theories of the virgin birth are there? How many doctrinal formulations of the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ are there? Well, listen, Harry Emerson Fosdick, the flaming liberal, didn't believe anything, didn't believe the Bible was God's word, didn't believe in the virgin birth, didn't believe in the substitutionary atonement, did not believe in the deity of Christ, didn't believe any of that stuff. He did a sermon, shall the fundamentalists win, but he still fancied himself to be a Christian. Listen to this paragraph. He says, quote, in that sermon, which John D. Rockefeller had printed off by the hundreds of thousands and distributed all over the United States because it was such a great sermon. Says Fosdick, quote, we may well begin with the vexed and mooted question of the virgin birth of our Lord. I know people in the Christian churches, ministers, missionaries, laymen, devoted lovers of the Lord and servants of the gospel who, alike as they are in their personal devotion to the master, hold quite different points of view about a matter like the virgin birth. Here, for example, is one point of view that the virgin birth is to be accepted as historical fact. It actually happened. Think about that. You say, okay, so I know very godly, devoted followers of Jesus, missionaries, pastors, lay people who hold two very different views on the virgin birth. Like for example, one of the views that I don't hold and that none of these people hold, one of the views is that the virgin birth happened. He goes on from there. But side by side with them in the evangelical churches is a group of equally loyal and reverent people who would say that the virgin birth is not to be accepted as a historical fact. Okay, so affirming the virgin birth and denying the virgin birth, those are different theories of the virgin birth. And what are you saying? You have to hold to a specific theory of the virgin birth to be a Christian? Well, you hold to the theory it happened and I hold to the theory that it didn't happen. And that's literally what this federal vision statement is saying. Any particular doctrinal formulation of the imputation of the act of being suppressed. Let me translate that for you. You can affirm it. You can deny it. We don't care. We don't care. So there's no unity. There's no unity on the gospel of Rome. There's no unity of gospel liberals. There's no unity on the gospel with federal vision churches and ministers. Here's another one. Listen. Law and gospel. We affirm that those in rebellion against God are condemned both by his law, which they disobey, and his gospel, which they also disobey. The gospel is to be obeyed. In 2 Thessalonians 1, there's one phrase there. They do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. What does that passage mean? Meaning they don't believe it. They don't believe in Christ. That's the only way the gospel can be disobeyed. But of course, the federal vision loves to absolutize Little phrases and turn them into dogmatic huge mountains of theology which overthrow the rest of scripture, but that's what all teachers have always done. They go on from there. When they have been brought to the point of repentance by the Holy Spirit, we affirm that the gracious nature of all God's words becomes evident to them. At the same time, we affirm that it is appropriate to speak of law and gospel as having a redemptive and historical thrust. With the time of the law being the old covenant era and the time of the gospel being the time where we enter our maturity as God's people, we further affirm that those who are first coming to faith in Christ frequently experience the law as an adversary and the gospel as deliverance from that adversary, meaning that traditional evangelistic applications of the law and gospel are certainly scriptural and appropriate. Always make sure you affirm the words of Orthodoxy. That's good. Now listen to what they deny. We deny that law and gospel should be considered as hermeneutics or treated as such. We believe that any passage, whether indicative or imperative, can be heard by the faithful as good news. And that any passage, whether containing gospel promises or not, will be heard by the rebellious as intolerable demand. The fundamental division is not in the text, but rather in the human heart. That's Theo Babel. But think about that. Okay, so imperatives, commands in scripture, they're good news. They're good. You shall have no other gods before me. That's good news. That's not gospel. That's law. If you miss this distinction when it comes to justification, if you do not, if you do not affirm the distinction between the law and the gospel when it comes to justification before God, you're not saved. You're not a Christian. You don't get it. So, They say here, on justification by faith alone, their definition of saving faith is wrong. They say, justifying faith encompasses the elements of assent, knowledge, and living trust, in accordance with the age and maturity of the believer. We deny that faith is ever alone, even at the moment of the effectual call. So, no matter how you would criticize this, of course, you're misunderstanding it, so why bother? Okay, assurance, apostasy, so on and so forth. And they go on from there. There's a lot more in this document that we can look at. I don't have unity with it on the gospel. I don't believe that this is true Christianity. This is really a throwback to a lot of what was condemned at the Synod of Dort. I actually have been putting together a document. I'd like to do a podcast on this. Much of what the federal vision guys proposed was supposedly breaking out new truth from God's word. It wasn't new truth, it was old heresy that was already addressed and condemned as such at the Senate of Dort. They didn't come up with anything new, none of it was new. So what is unity? Unity is when two Christians who affirm and believe the same gospel and believe in the same God embrace one another as part of the one body of Christ in the world. In any institution, I don't care how big it is, I don't care how many celebrities they have, if they do not believe and confess the doctrine of justification by faith alone, faith is nothing more than reliance upon the finished work of Christ for your whole salvation, then you don't have unity and you don't have a Christian church. Sproul was right. The unity that was once assumed to exist, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And that's a sad thing, because unity that's not based upon the true gospel is not unity at all. And we certainly live in dark times, but I will say, I've been encouraged by the emails I get. I'm encouraged by people's comments over here, comments left on videos, on my own much smaller channel and Brother Rich's channel, I hear the comments that people leave. I get email from people. People are People are getting sick of all the ambiguity on the gospel. They're getting sick of, of the federal vision, um, trying to, to, uh, style itself as true reform Christianity. It's not, it's not, I mean, their practice of pedo communion should tell you, should tell you that they're not, that this is not true reformed biblical Christianity. It's just not. Um, so. True unity has got to be based on a common gospel message. Okay. All right. Let me scroll over. I seriously make sure I say hello I always appreciate the people that come over here and there's Susan. Hey, Susan is Punching I'm assuming that's a fist bump and not punching me in the face Paul Garvey from England. There's blue-collar man Claudia from Deutschland from Germany Wow Someone's listening in Germany. That's amazing to me blue-collar, man Yeah, I'm struggling with seeing Arminians as brothers. Historic Arminian theology. I've got a video. It's on Richard's channel on historic Arminian theology. Historic Arminian theology is not Christianity. It's not. So you need to make sure you know what people mean by that word, Arminian. There's Robert Vogler. I always appreciate your kind emails, sir, very much. Matthew Eastman, Claudia from Germany there, and Timmy Wojcik from Fort Myers, Florida. Y'all enjoying the snow down there? I guess it doesn't snow very often down there. But I know it's snowing there. The weather here has just been absolutely brutally cold. Unbelievably cold. We're letting stray cats sleep in our garage because we're afraid they're gonna turn into catsicles. Okay, and there's Vincent. Now I have no interest in Mr. Adams anymore. Paul Garvey, Mountain Red, there's Rich Moore. Yes, everyone affirming solifidae is essential to Christianity. It's not just a central, a central, C-E-N-T-R-A-L, it is essential, E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L, essential. Without it, you don't have true Christianity. Okay, ECT, Matthew Eastman was talking about ECT as evangelicals and Catholics together. You should Google it and look at, read the history of the controversy. It's pretty ugly, pretty ugly stuff. by Rod and my staff. Thank you, sir. Having faith, the inner conflict amongst believers, especially with Reformed. Because Acts chapter 20, Paul's exhortation to the Ephesian elders there, where he says that, I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you. speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after themselves. What drives heretics and false teachers? It's pride. They want followers. They want people to stand in awe of their brilliant insights and Tell them how great they are. That's what Paul said. And they never go away. You have to be on the lookout for them. And the federal vision arose from inside of reformed churches, and it was heresy to the core. It always has been, it always will be. Anyone that's sympathetic to it or pushes or promotes it needs to realize that they are promoting gospel-level heresy. Okay, let's see. Is anyone else new? Grant Scott, you're new. Thank you for being on here. That's kind of weird. I could see how someone might get frustrated about that. And as for the thing about elders. Let's see what's going on. Okay, they're having a side conversation on there. That's good. Okay, good. Grant Scott sees it is essential to Christian faith. Very good. Justification by faith alone. Faith in Christ is not obedience. It is not works. It's not faithfulness. Faith in Christ, what it means to believe in Jesus is the opposite of believing in works. When you talk about do you believe in Jesus, what we're asking is do you rely upon him and his righteousness to save you? And if you're in any way, shape, or form trusting in your own works, or your sanctification, or your own holiness, you don't believe in Jesus then. To the one not working, but in opposition to working, believing. That's the person that God justifies. If you're working for it, He will not justify you. God only justifies those who do not work for it. And the fruit that grows on the tree does not make the tree good or bad. It only makes it known to other men. whether it is a good tree or a bad tree. And works do not make us good or bad. They only serve as fruit and evidence of justification. If you see the works of the believer as anything more than fruit and evidence, you don't understand Christianity then. You have a fatal error in your understanding if you think that. If you think that your good works are anything more than fruit and evidence, you don't understand Christianity. Christianity is a religion substitution. Jesus Christ entered into the broken legal covenant of works, achieved its righteous requirements perfectly, imputed it to my legal account, to my faith alone, completely apart from my works, and at the cross he is fully satisfied for all my sins. Okay, well I thank you all for being here. I'm going to see the doctor tomorrow morning, and I'll give you all an update. It's a heart doctor. Just please do pray. Pray that goes well. I have a couple little issues evidently, seemingly, so just pray for me. And I'll give an update soon on that. So anyway, that's tomorrow morning. Anyway, thank you all for watching or for listening.