A Salute to Honest Heretics or Why I left the PCUSA

By Todd D. Baucum
I have a profound respect (not an agreement or a liking) for liberals and revisionist like Bishop John Spong (ala Bishop Sponge)and the homoerotic Gene Robinson, titular head of the Episcopal diocese in New Hampshire. They follow in the infamous train of Bishop Spike and other radicals in the past. Why do I consider such men worthy of an honorable mention, when I as a traditional orthodox believer in the biblical Reformed Faith that is so much maligned and discounted by the aforementioned? For one, they have shown us a candor and certain honesty about their abandonment of the biblical doctrines of Traditional Christianity. They in fact make no bones about their ambition to strip the layers of superstition and ignorance that hinder their radical agenda to “move us out of the dark ages”. They fly their revisionist colors high with no apologies or attempt to hide undetected in the shadows of ecclesiastical ambiguity and the inflated hubris of their purple shirts.
As a Presbyterian without the office of Bishop speaking for me – we have not had the sort of men or leaders who are bold enough and forthright in their abandonment of the Faith in favor of a new religion based on the latest new ideas of progress. One reason for this is that the Episcopal Church has never had a strong presence of the puritan/evangelical tradition here in America (I learned this from my Anglican friends at Trinity School for Ministry – an evangelical, traditional school, -a bit of an anomaly in the Episcopal world in the U.S.) In contrast, Presbyterians have had a distinctively conservative, puritan/evangelical formation in North America. We were bound together by a common creed and spread along the colonies among Congregationalists and Reformed groups through the preaching of men like Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist and George Whitefield, an Anglican, who both preached a Calvinistic gospel set on fire with evangelical passion. This spiritual legacy has always loomed large on the social memory of American Presbyterians. Even among the more moderate or liberal “cradle Presbyterian” who grew away from the fold through liberal Enlightenment thought, there was no way to deny, he or she was born in a faith with deep roots in a strong biblical confession and fired with evangelical piety. At least their grandparents were brought up on the old Shorter Catechism. It is an undeniable history. Even in the old Presbyterian schools, now embracing the liberal views of the critical scholars, the portraits of the old Calvinist stalwarts still hang on the walls of the libraries and halls as an inescapable reminder of this past. Perhaps it haunts the conscience, but one would be mistaken to think that such historical legacy leaves anything other than the cash value of name association. History has its benefits for the tenured chair or the plush endowments of past benefactors of the old faithful. They live on borrowed capital.
Our Presbyterian liberals see the need to pay their respect to this social memory – they are not so ill mannered to tread on the graves of their fathers and mothers. They must give due respect to this confessional heritage, much like one wears a badge to show they belong as a member of the club, but one is totally free to believe as one likes. Because today the freedom of conscience is the value that trumps every other truth claim or authority - “Only God is Lord of the conscience” - an important sentiment among the Reformers to uphold the sacred obligation every soul has toward God’s true standard in the Bible. It has been morphed into a security blanket to hide every disagreement and departure one has with the confessional standards.
It therefore makes them less noticeable to the unsuspecting church member. They lie safe in the obscurity and ossifications of their revisionist language. It is why liberals among us most always speak with an evangelical accent. They know the history and the memory that still exists, ever so lightly perhaps these days as Presbyterians in the mainline church turn grey with their hoary heads. Where are the Presbyterian Spongs and the honest heretics among us? I surmise they are all around us, but don’t ask me to tell you who they are by the way they talk. Too many of them know the language of the Gospel, they just don’t believe in its content anymore. The vocabulary of the faith has been recast with a new and different lectionary of meaning. When Paul Tillich sought to restyle and revise orthodox Christianity he at least saw the need to revise not only the meaning along the lines German Idealism, but suggested new words and names. Reading his Systematic Theology, for example is like Alice in Wonderland, wondering about the meaning of words, when words are just made up at the whims of the speaker. His approach was never fully embraced because it lacked any acceptance among people in the pews who for whatever reason clung to the language of Zion and the familiar words of the Faith. Sadly, for many of them those words have no more meaning.
And so it stands that today a once great denomination has embraced a new theology and a new gospel. I bid my friends still in the PCUSA my sincere hope that those who hold to the old words and the old faith, which still brings life and renewal, will remain true and follow their Captain and great Head of the Church.

Robert Moffat - The Apostle to South Africa

Robert Moffat – The Apostle to South Africa – 1795-1883

Only one Life
It will soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last



The history of Africa cannot be written without the mention of Robert Moffat. While today the vestiges of British colonialism are being washed away in the new tide of African nationalism, the name of Moffat is still respected.

Born in a small village in Scotland of simple and devoted Presbyterian parents, Robert Moffat came into the world at the end of the 18th Century. Like other young boys in love with the ocean, young “Bobbie” dreamed of a life as a sailor. Not given much to study or books, his parents allowed him at age ten to sail for a few years in the company of a friend. Perhaps this sense of adventure on the high seas would be used by God as he fearlessly entered into new regions of what was known then as the Dark Continent. Robert eventually received an education and as a young man set his eyes on London to further his education. His mother made him promise to read his Bible daily and once he swore to his mother, he felt compelled to fulfill his sworn duty. He was after all a Scotchman. Reading the Bible at first was just a mere duty, but something happened as he read Romans that transformed the whole of his life. After his conversion to Christ, Robert fell in with some friends who introduced him to missions. He applied to the London Missionary Society but was rejected at first. After a year working as a gardener, and studying on the side, Robert reapplied and was accepted.

At the young age of 21, Moffat was sent by LMS to South Africa, where they had a mission established at Capetown. A few years later Robert returned to England and there fell in love with Mary Smith, the only daughter of a man who he used to work for. The father was not too happy about sending his daughter to Africa. Moffat went back to South Africa still single, but found great happiness when finally Mary Smith arrived in Capetown with the blessing of Mr. Smith. It was the beginning of a blessed missionary marriage. Mary was the model missionary wife who provided support and a true spirit of partnership to her husband. The fruit of that happy union resulted in ten children, three who died early in life, and seven who all went into Christian Missions.

Known as the “Apostle of South Africa”, Moffat was not the first Protestant missionary to Africa. His title is to describe the influence he had in Southern Africa to bring the gospel to warring tribes and the sustaining contribution of a life’s work. He was instrumental in the conversion of one notorious tribal chief by the name of Afrikaner. Moffat at first saw little fruit in the way of conversions as he relied mostly on a version of the Dutch language to communicate with the tribesmen. He eventually learned the language and was the first to translate the Bible in an African language. He even bought a press to print them. The Bible in their own language, plus a translation of The Pilgrim’s Progress and a hymnal, proved to be the basis for giving the Africans the means to greater discipleship and growth as a church.

Moffat is overshadowed in the public view by his famous son-in-law, David Livingstone another great missionary to enter into the deeper regions of inland Africa. Moffat actually met Livingstone while visiting Scotland and encouraged Livingstone to come with him to Africa. So, while Livingstone remains legendary in the annals of British history, (receiving a resting place at Westminster Abbey!) Moffat did more to give and to influence Africa for Christ. Robert and Mary Moffat spent over 50 years ministering the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over Southern Africa. They retired back to England due to the health of Mary. There he received the reception of a national hero, being awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Andrews, eating breakfast with the Prime Minister Gladestone and meeting Queen Victoria. In 1883, from his estate in Kent, Moffat who wrote that "I have sometimes seen in the morning sun the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been," went into the presence of the Light of the World, whom he had faithfully served for so many years.

Todd D. Baucum

For Further Reading:
Vance Christie, Into All The World (Heroes of Faith Series), (Barbour Pub., 2004).

Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Zondervan, 1983).

The Evidence for Faith - Series in John

Sunday Morning Sermon Series on the Gospel of John preached by me at First Presbyterian Church, Enterprise, AL. This is from John 20:24-31 dealing with Thomas and his doubts about Christ. Click on the title above to hear the message.

Descended into Hell?

Descended into Hell?

What does this strange phrase mean in the Apostles Creed?Deut. 29:29 (NIV)
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

In biblical doctrine it is always good to keep this scriptural principle in mind, that there are many secret things concerning God’s work of redemption we do not know. But God has fully declared to us what we need to know in the Holy Bible. We shall not venture where angles fear to tread.


Creeds are statements of what Christians believe about our redemption in Christ. They are very biblical and we even find them in the Scriptures. Here is an early one in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. It may be the core of what was later to become the Apostles’ Creed.

1 Cor. 15:3-7 (ESV)
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, [4] that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, [5] and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [6] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [7] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.


Hell or Hades?

We must first assert that most of the struggle with this phrase in the Creed comes from our inadequate vocabulary in the English language. The biblical uses reflect a variety of words that mean different things for our one word. Sometimes the Creed has been modernized by saying “He descended into the dead”. This is closer to the original meaning, but even then I find it less satisfactory, because many today have an unbiblical view of death. Some wonder if it is a real place, or is it some sort of soul-sleep? It think it best to retain the older word and help change our misinformation and keep the Creed as it is.

The Creed uses a word that means “place of the dead” conveyed in the Hebrew as Sheol and in Greek as Hades. It is not our common understanding of hell as the place of eternal torment referred to as the “second death”.




Hell as Eternal Punishment

When hell is described as the final judgment of the lost that are without Christ in the New Testament it uses the word Gehenna. This was a real place outside Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and was the place where Isaiah envisioned burning corpses (Isa. 66:24). It was also the site of pagan child sacrifice where babies were burned alive (2 Kings. 16:3). When Jesus taught about hell in his parables he used this term most frequently, hence the idea of eternal torment that comes in the final judgment comes from Christ himself.

But, we must be careful not to read this understanding of hell into the other words the Bible describes as either Hades or Sheol – which is an interim place of the dead, until Christ changed Hades with his death and resurrection.

Ephes. 4:8 (ESV)
Therefore it says,
"When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men."

1 Peter 3:18-20 (ESV)
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, [19] in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, [20] because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.




4 Views on Christ descent into Hell

1). Figurative Sense. The phrase is only understood figuratively to underscore the previous statement that Christ suffered, died and was buried. The understanding is that Christ truly “tasted death” for us and fully experienced the pains of death for us. Passages that indicate Jesus entering into prison to preach to spirits (ie. 1 Peter 3:19, Eph. 4:8) are to be understood as the gospel being proclaimed by the Spirit through the Old Testament prophets. They see 2 Peter 2:4 as saying that Noah preached the gospel to those before the Flood, so that they did not die as in some sort of innocence. (This is to counter the view we see later where some take these passages as saying Christ was preaching the gospel to souls in Hades to give them some sort of second chance.) Many good Reformed, Evangelical scholars hold to this view and even among some Presbyterian churches this part of the Creed is troublesome and is left out while reciting it in public worship. That is not to say that those who take a more figurative stance are against leaving it in the Creed.

2. A Real Descent to Hades. John Calvin firmly held that this statement needed to be retained in the Creed to affirm the spiritual dimension of Christ’s suffering for us in his death. Christ did not just suffer physically on the Cross or in his death. He suffered the “Forsakenness of God” and the wrath of God’s judgment on sin. As Paul says, Christ “became sin for us.” (2 Cor.5:21) “Hence there is nothing strange in it being said that he descended to hell, seeing he endured the death which is inflicted on the wicked by an angry God…the Creed appropriately adds the invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he endured before God, to teach us that not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of redemption, but that there was a greater and more excellent price – that he bore in his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined man.” (Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 16;8) Along with Martin Luther, Calvin rejected the Medieval Roman Catholic view of the “harrowing of Hell” with its many intricate categories of hell with purgatory and limbo, where second chances are offered whereby creating a new system of salvation. But, Calvin did see passages such as 1 Peter 3:19 as signifying (not with perfect certainty) that Christ proclaimed his victory over hell to those awaiting their redemption in Paradise. So, it was not a preaching to the lost and condemned for a second chance but a seal to their damnation and a declaration that Satan’s kingdom was vanquished. As Calvin states, “Thus by engaging with the power of the devil, the fear of death, and the pains of hell, he gained the victory, and achieved a triumph, so that we now fear not in death those things which our Prince has destroyed.” Martin Luther writing in a sermon in 1533 asserted that in the descent of Christ into hell, “the Lord Christ – the entire person, God and man, with body and soul, undivided – had journeyed to Hell, and had in person demolished Hell(Hades) and bound the Devil.” (Bloesch, p. 147). (This is the view held by J.I. Packer, Sinclair Fergusen and C.S. Lewis and is one that I favor.)


These last two views are considered outside the scope of biblical teaching, but float around in various forms.

3. The Medieval View. The Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation had developed a rather elaborate and detailed structure and doctrine of the afterlife that was clearly extra biblical. Even today the doctrine of Limbo (the place of innocents and unbaptized babies, similar yet distinct from Purgatory) is being reevaluated. Pope Benedict is saying that it is now no longer official teaching of the Church. It is impossible in one paragraph to explain in an adequate way the view of the Roman Catholic Church, except to say that they go far beyond what Calvin would affirm and assert that Christ’s descent was a proclamation of the Gospel to all mortals for a second chance. This is a simple way to see their principle behind their reason for praying for the dead and how they place the doctrine of Purgatory (only figuratively in Dante’s poem) in a prominent place in their theology. Evangelical believers along with Calvin must reject any such extra-biblical ideas that take us beyond what Scripture clearly and uniformly declare. After death there is judgment and only those who are in Christ receive eternal life and those are outside of Christ will be eternally lost and condemned to the lake of fire where death and Hades are thrown (Rev. 20:13-15).

4. The Word of Faith View. This is the view promoted by Kenneth Hagin and other prominent Word of Faith preachers. They hold that our salvation and redemption is secured by Christ’s actually going to hell – in the Gehenna sense, that is in the eternal torment and suffered that hell for us. The upshot of this teaching is that it discredits the atonement of Christ on the Cross by saying that it was not on the Cross where our atonement was made. Again, we can agree with Calvin that the full wrath of God was poured out on Christ and that he tasted hell for us in the judgment of God for our sins, but we cannot say that Christ was in Hell suffering and held in prison, so to speak by the Devil. It implies that when Jesus said it was finished, he was wrong because he had to suffer more in hell.

This is a heretical teaching and is not found in Scripture – and every heresy has a note of truth in it! The death and Cross of Jesus declared the victory of God over death and hell and that what Christ tasted for us in beyond our comprehension and enters into the area of Divine Mystery, but we must say that the Cross was totally sufficient to assuage the wrath of God and the purchase of our forgiveness.


Resources
J.I. Packer, I Want To Be A Christian. Tyndale House, 1977.

Donald Bloesch, The Last Things. IVP, 2004.

Richard Bewes, 100 Questions. Christian Focus, 2005.

Edmund Clowney, The Message of First Peter. IVP, 1988.

Why Should We Renovate?

One well known architect and church consultant has written that 90 percent of churches that build new buildings do so for the wrong reasons. Many building projects are initiated where there is no real need, but done so for unbiblical reasons.
Wrong reasons to renovate or build:
1. People in the community will see we are doing something.
2. We need a project that we can all get behind and work for.
3. So we can be proud of our building when visitors come.
4. We should use our money on something we can see.
5. Because other churches have built new buildings.

Let’s look at these reasons in light of our biblical calling as a church.
1. It is never a godly motivation to be worried about what others are thinking about our ministry. The truth is that most of what a faithful body of believers do on a day to day basis is unnoticed by others. God who sees in secret will reward openly.
2. If a building project is needed to bring about unity of purpose and a common vision, then the church has a faulty view of unity. Unity must come as a gift of the Holy Spirit that is created from a common faith and commitment to biblical truth. Our unity must come from our doctrine not a building project. This is why most building projects results in the loss of members and division in the body.
3. The focus of all our worship is to bring glory and pleasure to God. Our place of worship is a much a part of our offering to God as our praise and singing. We should not ever desire that people come and say what a lovely building this is, but say, “they must worship a glorious God.” In other words, the building should be more of a reflection of the goodness and majesty of God rather than the deep pockets of donors. We don’t want a building that is a showcase of our talents and gifts, but a place where people hear the glorious Gospel and enter the presence of the God to whom all nations will give glory.
4. Whenever God blesses us with resources, they belong to Him and His Kingdom. We are stewards of these gifts. It is for this reason that our church is one of the biggest giving churches to our Presbytery and why we have a growing commitment to giving to world-wide missions. None of this giving is something we see. We are casting bread upon the waters. Buildings and upkeep is expensive and so we should be conservative in our spending, but also, “not offer sacrifices that cost us nothing" (2 Sam. 26). Worship is about giving God our best. Israel was wrong to live in paneled houses with the latest in fashionable comfort, while God’s house was still in disrepair. The church building is not God’s temple, for God dwells with his people. However, the place of worship should reflect our attitude about God.
5. Other churches do all sorts of things that we don’t. We have a commitment to be a church that is biblical and true to the Reformed Faith. This means we ought to have a sound biblical reason in anything we do. Many churches think that worship should be entertaining. Many churches think they should have a program for every group in the church. Many churches think they need a recreational center for their people. It is not that most of these things are wrong, but that these things “what are people are doing”, is not the guide for our worship and service. The Reformers made many changes in worship, because the medieval church was steeped in all types of worship accruements and services so that the real task of the church such as preaching the Gospel and true worship was almost totally obscured. Many evangelicals are closer to Rome than you think, because we are prone to try all sorts of innovations just because others are doing it.
For now God has placed us as a witness to the Gospel and to biblical Faith in downtown Enterprise. We need to be faithful and good stewards of what our resources and our building. Our only motivation ought to be to do that which honors Christ and brings him glory.

At the PCA General Assembly - Report of the Overtures Committee

At the PCA General Assembly - Report of the Overtures Committee

The PCA is an example that the work of the Reformation is always ongoing, seeking to be faithful to the revealed Word of God as our supreme norm in faith and life. Hence, the photo of the Wittenburg Door with the 95 thesis. I am still very thankful for being in the PCA!

May 29 - Morning Sermon - "With Thankful Hearts"

Another in the series on worship. Towards thinking biblically about worship. Click the title to hear the message based on Colossians 3:17-20.