THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--Part II

CATCHIN' UP.
ODMs (online discernment ministries) are an important tool today. False teaching is flowering like dandelions in the lawn. Only the lawn is gone. There are clumps of grass among the weeds.

The fault lies with folks like myself who, in our younger years, decided that doctrine wasn't important. I tell young folks they must reject almost all my generation gave them. Stick to your Bibles and be suspiscious.

Nevertheless, there are some in the ODM world who aren't even saved. The proof is in their lives. Part I dealt with two sins currently rampant. One is a general looseness in ethics. Plagiarism is common and shoddy workmanship biblically and logically go unchallenged. As long as there is an argument against the heretics, it doesn't seem to matter if the argument is right or wrong. It may be pure insults meant to hurt or it may illogical. That seems okay. Just blab it out there.


The second sin is rooted in team spirit of a sorts. I was recently told by a fellow ODMer not to expose Ravi Zacharias because he was "on the same team". I couldn't disagree more. There is a difference between orthodoxy and regeneration. But that's a long discussion. Additionally, there seems to be an implicit admission on the part of many in the ODM movement that we can't count on God. We need big organizations. We need to stick together and support each other. We can't break from someone just because they're in sin. We need them. Or perhaps, we don't want to believe a friend is on the wrong side. That will cost too much.

STARTING WITH THE HOUSE OF GOD.
What exactly do all false teachers have in common? What is it they do that is repugnant to God? Think particularly of the Emergent, because they come right out and say they're doing it. Rob Bell said he and his honey were "rediscovering Christianity" as an Eastern religion. (1) Remember that? Many go even further. The word is "reimagining". Reimagining the Christian faith is currently in style. We ODMers just can't abide that, because the Scripture is abundantly clear. The faith is the same as was first delivered to the saints. Truth has no room for imagining anything. Whether or not they would use that same language, all false teachers commit the sin of abandoning Scripture, either in part or in whole, to pursue doctrines and opinions not secured in Scripture.


How is it then that so many of us feel so free to break the second commandment? Paul Washer has become quite popular among young folks and many ODMers. He has railed against many of the sins in the Evangelical church, including the breaking of the second commandment and I think we need to heed his warnings. He's right.

I've made the mistake of gently and softly trying to tell a number of ODMers that this commandment is real and serious. And that I, like them, once kept pictures of fellows who posed for paintings which were then hung and presented as if the fellow was Jesus.

Here is the second commandment in the NASB:

Exodus 20:4-6 You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

I, like a lot of my generation of Evangelicals, was raised to ignore this commandment in regard to pictures of different men who were painted up to represent Jesus. So I want to be gentle here, knowing that some who read this aren't going to take it well. Just read and see for yourself. I was where you are.

"But we aren't worshipping the picture, it only represents Jesus," you might say. Do you remember the story of the golden calf? Go back to Exodus and read it again. The bull was to represent Yahweh. Read what Aaron said in Exodus 32:

Exodus 32:2-4 And Aaron said to them, "Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." 3 Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."

The calf didn't exist before that day. Yet, Aaron said it represented Yahweh, Who brought them out of Mitsraim. Just like the pictures "represent Jesus".

"But we are innocent, because it's just how we conceptualize Jesus." I hear that all the time. In fact, I've heard it from the folks who run the blogs here and here. But isn't that what the Emergent is doing? Reimagining God? And we have God's permission to do that, but the Emergents don't? And isn't that just what the second commandment forbids? Fantasizing about what God is like?

Lest you think me wierd, I would like to remind you that most of the ODMers are calling right now for a reformation or a return to the reformation. The Reformers wouldn't have anything to do with many of us. They'd call us "idolaters" and shun us.

Which leads me to the next section.

DROPPING NAMES AND CLAIMING A BROTHERHOOD THAT ISN'T THERE.-- Shooting some Quayle.
An otherwise good man got caught in a childish lie on October 5, 1988. His name is Dan Quayle. He didn't speak the lie. He implied it. He was running for vice president of the US and he'd been accused of being short on experience for the job of president if the president should die and he became president through succession. In a debate with Lloyd Bentsen, his rival, Quayle compared his experience with that of Jack Kennedy.

The dynamic here may be lost on some of you younger readers and some of you who aren't American. Kennedy was a Democrat and Quayle was a Republican, so the two would have been adversaries if Kennedy was alive, but at the time, Kennedy was revered as a heroic figure. So Quayle was happy to compare himself to Kennedy, instead of a Republican of similar background. I remember the time and it felt uncomfortable when he said it because everyone knew that Quayle was pulling a fast one. He wasn't like Kennedy at all and everyone knew it. Bentsen was simply the first to call Quayle on his charade. Read how Bentsen taught Quayle a lesson in honesty:

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy: I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy. (2)

The place roared and it was the most embarrassing moment that I can remember in American politics. HE WAS CAUGHT.

Similarly, most of us realize that few in the ODM movement measure up to our fathers. And we need to stop faking it. I've read Charles Spurgeon, and many ODMers are no Charles Spurgeon. NOT EVEN close.

But this is more than a mistake or a simple thing explained by zeal if one really understands just what these men believed. I've already written in Part I of the issue of biblical separation and how some ODMs don't obey what we want others to do. The fathers would have very bad things to say to us about that, but I'm not even going to get into that today.

Let's just look at what the Reformers and some of the fathers taught about the second commandment. They thought those who had images weren't their brothers at all. They would call many of us idolators, just like we call the Emergents false teachers. There is no difference in the mind of men like Spurgeon. Want proof? Spurgeon heartily endorsed Matthew Henry. Read what Spurgeon said about Henry:

First among the mighty (commentaries) for general usefulness we are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word, Matthew Henry. He is the most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy . . . he is deeply spiritual, heavenly, profitable; finding good matter in every text, and from all deducting the most practical and judicious lessons . . . It is the Christian's companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all. (3)

And see what Henry had to say about the second commandment in Matthew Henry's Commentary of Exodus 20:4-6:

The prohibition: we are here forbidden to worship even the true God by images, v. 4, 5. [1.] The Jews (at least after the captivity) thought themselves forbidden by this commandment to make any image or picture whatsoever. Hence the very images which the Roman armies had in their ensigns are called an abomination to them (Mt. 24:15), especially when they were set up in the holy place. It is certain that it forbids making any image of God (for to whom can we liken him? Isa. 40:18, 15), or the image of any creature for a religious use.

And what about other historical Baptists and others leading to Spurgeon's era? The Baptist Confession of 1689 relied heavily on the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger Catechism says this about the second commandment:

The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.--Answer to question 109.

The same is said in fewer words about the second commandment in the Heidelberg Catechism, question 96. And the reason the Protestants were so big on this is in the language of the second commandment. See what is said about "any image of anything". It's clear.

The conclusion is inescapable. Our fathers in the faith and the Reformers would have nothing to do with those among us who break the second commandment. Is it not hypocritical, then to identify with men who would put us out of their churches and use their words as if we were brothers with them?

Earlier I gave two links to websites that are accepted by other ODMs or call themselves ODM. They are Faces Like Flint and Thinker Up. I contacted both. Faces was some time ago. Perhaps two years. All I got from "Sirrod" was anger. I recently found out that Thinker Up was breaking the second commandment on their front page. Reason didn't help. And Kenny Oliver over there was once a close friend, but he has added a picture of a jesus and that's that.

Faces is actually promoted at Christian Research Network. I haven't contacted anyone there except one and I'm pretty sure not all realize what's going on. So, I don't want to cast a bad light on all of them, but the one I did contact responded only with anger. No argument was given, only anger. Read and understand this:

If you're an ODMer, and fellowship with folks in unrepentant sin or break the second commandment, don't quote Paul Washer or Charles Spurgeon, or Calvin. Don't be a Quayle.

Please remember, most folks in the ODMs are great people, doing just exactly what needs to be done. They are under appreciated, scorned, and hated. But not by God. These sins are the sins only of some. Pray for purity.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1)http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/november/12.36.html
(2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you_are_no_Jack_Kennedy
(3)http://www.monergismbooks.com/Matthew-Henrys-Commentary-on-the-Whole-Bible-p-16504.html

COMING TOMORROW IN THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--The Challenge Ahead of Us.