Minunderstanding Reformed Baptist Beliefs & Heritage

Is ignorance really bliss?

From Tom Ascol @ http://www.founders.org/blog/

If so, then the guy who preached this sermon ought to be deliriously happy. It is too full of historical, theological and exegetical fallacies to be taken seriously, so if you listen to it, do so for entertainment value. Regrettably, some people may take what he says to heart, but they will be held accountable if they do, because the truth is readily available and easily accessible to debunk most of his claims.

Here are a few of his "insights" that illustrate what I am talking about.

• Federal Visionism or Auburn Avenue theology is making inroads into Reformed Baptist churches.
• John Reisinger is a leader of the New Covenant theology movement (true enough), and that movement teaches that the Decalogue remains a standard of righteousness for Christians today. This makes him a legalist.
• In refuting this "new" Reformed Baptist teaching he traces his own spiritual lineage back to George Whitefield (I guess he assumes that Whitefield, because he was evangelistic, had to be an Independent Fundamental Baptist!).
• He claims to know some Baptist pastors who have given up reading the Bible so that they can read the Westminster Confession instead.
• Reformed, sovereign grace Baptists are moving toward the Anglicans and Presbyterians on the way to a "one world church."
• He equates modern Baptists with 16th century anabaptists (something of which, in the wake of the recovery of the true doctrinal heritage of Sandy Creek I predict we will see more and more from certain sectors of SBC life in the years ahead).
• "If you say you're a Baptist and you read John Calvin, you're an idiot, you're a fool."
• "You're a hypocrite if you preach the so-called doctrines of grace."
• Reformed Baptists are "flaming, stinking hypocrites" if they use any of the "classic" Baptist hymnals, because all of the hymns in those books contradict the doctrines of grace, such as that "old Baptist hymn," "Grace Greater than All Our Sin" (Don't tell him that it was written by Julia H. Johnston, daughter of the 19th century pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Peoria, Illinois. Julia directed the Sunday school of the church for over 40 years in addition to serving as President of the Presbyterian Missionary Society of for 20 years.).
• If you are a Reformed Baptist and you sing the above hymn (and others he lists, including "Arise My Soul, Arise") you are a "rotten, dirty, lying hypocrite."

I close with one of the very few statements that this preacher made with which I agree--it is near the end of his sermon, "Please don't listen to me, Go to the Words of the Spirit, go to the Word of God." Amen.