After reading this at Matt Gumm’s blog I had to Google around a bit and find out what was going on. The convergence is pretty big for me; I am a Reformed Baptist homeschooling person who has been on the wrong end of bad teaching and practice from church leadership. This link to the Austins’ multi-chapter story should provide the necessary information; official documents can be found here.
As the title of this post says, this is hard to watch. I have enjoyed and appreciated RC Sproul Jr’s work in the past; sure, I knew he was a Presby through and through, and a little too Federal-Vision-y for my tastes (and I say that as somebody who links to Doug Wilson almost as much as I link to Steve Hays), and there are certainly days when I wish I could be postmillennial without having to chuck my whole theology and understanding of the bible. But down deep, I have always thought that if somebody just really had their theology right, then their practice had to be right, didn’t it? That’s why I excused bad practice in so many churches (and in the old ministry), because I figured the theology would put it right, or maybe I wasn’t enlightened enough, too fundamentalist, or too legalistic. And having adopted Reformed theology, and believing that it is the most consistent, exegetical, and transparent hermeneutic for Scripture, I just naturally assumed again that anybody else who was, er, truly Reformed (I hate to use that phrase, BHT has ruined it for me), would naturally do the right thing. How could a person be Reformed and homeschooling and so forth, and be a wolf?
We haven’t heard the other side of the story yet. If I were a Presbyterian (I’m not, I’m Baptist/Congregational in my polity), their deposement (“deposition” doesn’t sound right, I must be missing something, and “defrocking” is too laden with connotations) would pretty much end the story for me. But I’m not, so I will wait to see what happens and whether RCJr and the elders of St. Peter will speak up anytime soon. I will say that I recognize the symptoms, and I would not like to say that the Austins were lying. Could there have been misunderstandings? Yes. But could they all have been misunderstandings? I don’t see how.
I am glad that it is not up to us to pass judgment on fellow believers, on “the servant of another” (Rom. 14:4). I think I am mostly posting this for the benefit of my readers who do not consider themselves Reformed—perhaps they will read this and know that I am not blindly confessional or Reformed. These are things that will come up a lot in the second half of the testimony (and I am still working on that, but the nitty-gritty of the problems with Anglo-Israelism really take a fair amount of careful wording, particularly when expressing it to people who haven’t been exposed to it). The next 5-6 posts are going to be grueling and slow, but they are the necessary parts of the story.
While I am updating things in general, let me point out that somebody else left work last week, and the burdens have shifted again. In addition, sickness which had left my family seems to be coming back around again, and my own spiritual life needs a lot of effort that I am not putting into it, as usual. I do plan to get back around to regular posting, though. Please pray for me and my family. I have a lot of good news too but again, it doesn’t really fit anywhere until I’m done with the testimony. Sorry. I will wrap things up, if the Lord wills that I finish the task of writing this.
One more thing. Thank God for His gift of the Body of Christ, the fellowship of the saints. Without them I don’t think I could stand. It’s not a statement of how great my burdens are, but of how weak I am without the power of God and the prayer and exhortation and encouragement of my fellow believers and heirs. A special thanks to those who took a minute yesterday to talk to me and encourage me after church—you know who you are, and even if I didn’t respond well or very openly, let me assure you that I needed to hear it, and I benefitted from it.
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