An open letter to those still in the PCUSA who love Jesus
and want to follow Him in faithfulness with a whole heart
Mike Humphreys, Virginia, March 27, 2012
For many years we raised sheep on our farm. As a shepherd, I loved my flock. As a follower of the Good Shepherd, my heart is deeply grieved for the greater flock of God that I see being bruised, led astray and scattered – as depicted in Ezekiel 34.
I have been mulling over this letter for some months; and I feel compelled to submit it after watching an on-line CNN interview with the openly-partnered, homosexual minister Scott Anderson, recently ordained in the PCUSA. I hope this letter will resonate with some who still do not recognize the seriousness of this milestone, or have simply not made a decision. I recognize that this letter is not to the many, but to the few. I am also deeply concerned about the lambs of God’s flock who may not understand all that’s going on.
I do not intend to be harsh, nor do I want to sound mean, but its time for some straightforward talk. If this helps only one church or one person to make the decision to “come out from among them,” then it is worth the effort and the likely negative personal consequences I expect to be hurled my way.
I graduated from a Presbyterian college with the intent to enter the ministry. I was under the care of my local presbytery. I applied to and was accepted into a Presbyterian seminary. I shall always love the church in which I was raised and in which my family and I, and my wife and her family, all came to faith in Christ. In obedience to Him, we became a part of the millions who have left the Presbyterian Church in recent years. I am a brother in Christ to those who believe in His name and show themselves to be His disciples by doing the will of the Father as revealed in the Bible.
Whether we are speaking of a bullet, an artillery shell, or an airplane, it is possible to track and predict the trajectory and impact point of an object moving through space by collecting and plotting the data points along it’s path.
For many years now – decades really – we have been plotting data points along the path the PCUSA has chosen. Carmen Fowler LaBerge has done a masterful job in laying out the history of the PCUSA in her February article “How we got ‘here’.” It is a monumental effort worthy of detailed study by individuals, sessions and congregations. I encourage you to print it, and hand it out to your members. It’s that important!
Now we have the ordination of Anderson (and other openly gay officers) as well as examples of Presbyterian ministers openly performing same-sex marriages and the extension of benefits to the same-sex partners of church employees by the Board of Pensions. After plotting these new data points, if the denomination were an aircraft, I would note its trajectory and state that it is moving in a “dangerous downward vector.”
Anderson’s ordination was a watershed. It marks the official introduction and open acceptance of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah into the PCUSA, functionally severing that branch from the universal body of Christians whose head is Christ.
Let us be very clear: it is possible now to declare finally that within the PCUSA, the “modernists,” the liberals, the unbelievers and the ecclesiastical atheists (those who worship a god of their own creation) have finally “won” the war for the heart of this once great denomination. She has clearly abandoned her first love.
We must all understand that what we believe governs our actions, and that our choices, personal decisions, and actions all have consequences – and many have eternal consequences.
Do you know the name Harry Emerson Fosdick? He was one of the most gifted, eloquent, and well-known ministers of the first half of the 20th century. He was very well educated (Colgate, Union Theological Seminary), had a keen intellect, and, although a Baptist, from 1918 to 1925 he became minister of First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Later, he was minister at the Riverside Church for many years and taught at Union Theological Seminary.
He was a prolific author – having written more than 40 books, some of which sold in the millions. He wrote a well-known hymn that is still sung today, and had a radio program that was broadcast in the US and abroad for 17 years. He wrote for many popular magazines of his day. He was on Time magazine’s cover in 1925 and 1930. He was possibly one of the best-known religious figures in American life in the first half of the 20th century.
He was a “theological rebel.” He was also one of the foremost liberals and modernists of his era.
While the disagreements between conservatives and liberals had been simmering for some time, Fosdick is credited with starting the open warfare between them in his famous 1922 sermon, Shall the Fundamentalists Win?
This is the war that has now been concluded within the PCUSA with the ordination of unrepentant homosexuals.
I first heard Dr. Fosdick’s name during a Bible study while in college. The Presbyterian minister leading the study told us how, during WWII, he was a soldier in the Pacific. He recounted listening to Dr. Fosdick preach an Easter message carried by the armed forces radio network and hearing him say that the spirit of Jesus lives eternally but “the body of Jesus lies sleeping sweetly somewhere in Palestine.” Here and elsewhere, Dr. Fosdick clearly denied the bodily resurrection of Christ.
Fosdick wrote in a letter to a young man saying: “Too many theories of the atonement assume that by one single high priestly act of self-sacrifice Christ saved the world. No! Dr. Fosdick denied the atonement.
He deemed the idea of the literal second coming of Christ to be absurd.
He once boasted that he had never recited the Apostle’s Creed.
He wrote of himself in his autobiography: “They call me a heretic. Well, I am a heretic if conventional orthodoxy is the standard. I should be ashamed to live in this generation and not be a heretic.” [1]
Dr. Fosdick died in 1969. After his death, Rev. Johan D. Tangelder wrote of him, “The liberal Fosdick tried to have fellowship with a god who was the product of his own intellect. His christ was not the Christ of the Scriptures. His Christianity was a humanism influenced by Christian principles.”
By every standard of the world, Fosdick achieved fame and lived a very successful life. According to many people he might be termed a “good man.”
Perhaps we should ask ourselves, “Where is he now?” Because choices, personal decisions and actions all have consequences, just exactly where is Dr. Fosdick’s eternal abode?
Is he now rejoicing with the writers of the Bible: Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Mark, Luke and the others, when Dr. Fosdick taught for many years against the divine inspiration of Scripture?
Is he in the presence of the saints of the Early Church who laid down their lives over the question of whether Caesar or Jesus was Lord, when he denied the atoning work of Christ?
Is he with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her other sons, Jesus’ brothers (Acts 1:14b), when he denied and taught against the virgin birth?
Is he in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, after denying and preaching against the clear Scriptural witnes
s and Biblical teaching of the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead?
Should we really believe that a man who taught for years against the essentials of the Christian faith is in heaven?
Or should we understand instead that God meant what He said, that one who denies the truth of Revelation 1:5 – that Jesus is the Firstborn from among the dead – should suffer the eternal judgment of Revelation 22:19?
If the positive side of the Gospel is encapsulated in John 3:16, the other side of the coin is Jesus’ words in John 8:24. Here Jesus states, “… for if you do not believe that I am He [Whom I claim to be — if you do not adhere to, trust in and rely on Me] you will die in your sins.” (Amp.) Harry Emerson Fosdick denied the deity and atoning work of Christ.
If we take at face value the words of Jesus in John 8:24, and if we take at face value the statements of Dr. Fosdick, we must conclude that that he died with his sin unforgiven.
Why is this important? Because the spiritual offspring of Harry Emerson Fosdick – those who wear his spiritual mantle and teach his brand of unbelief and propagate his false doctrines – have taken control of the PCUSA. They teach in seminaries, preach in pulpits and control the machinery of the denomination. Fosdick may have started the war, but his spiritual descendants have now won it.
I am continually astounded that people don’t connect actions with consequences. Please let me give you an example from my professional world. I have been a pilot for many years, first in the military, later an airline pilot. I now fly business jets.
Suppose you were to board a plane bound for Washington Dulles International airport in Virginia. Now suppose the pilot says to himself, “It’s a beautiful, clear day so why don’t we fly down the Potomac River and take the folks to Reagan National airport instead. After all, it’s a gorgeous day to see downtown DC out the windows and Reagan National is closer to the city than landing way out in Virginia. The people will actually appreciate it because they will be closer to downtown.”
Now suppose this pilot were actually to willfully ignore his flight dispatch and his flight plan and do this. Do you think his company might have something to say about it? How about Air Traffic Control? Except for a valid weather divert, do you think the Feds might have something to say about taking his passengers to the wrong airport? How about all the people in the back who unexpectedly arrive at National and whose transportation is at Dulles? What about those making connections at Dulles, how will they feel about the pilot exercising his personal proclivity to do what was right at that moment in his own eyes?
But some others might say, “What’s the big deal? It’s still Washington DC.”
Now suppose while our errant pilot is flying into Reagan National airport, he says, “It’s such a beautiful day, I think I’ll take a short trip out over the city of Washington, and we’ll take a turn over the Capitol and the White House before we land.” In doing so he would violate the permanent restricted area over downtown Washington, the Capitol and the White House. There would be consequences.
Were he to have flown over downtown Washington DC before 9/11/2001, the consequences would have been: the pilot would have been met at the gate by the police and taken into custody. He would have been summarily fired by his airline, and the FAA would have issued an emergency revocation of his Airline Transport Pilot license. Finally, a group of federal prosecutors would have compiled a laundry list of federal regulations the pilot had broken. His trial would have made national news.
Today, in a post 9/11 world, the consequences could well be deadly. If the wayward plane were deemed a threat to the nation’s Capitol or White House by the national command authority, the aircraft would be ordered shot down. Everybody onboard, along with the pilot – who was exercising a capricious whim – would die.
I have never met another pilot stupid enough to even contemplate such a foolish act as the one described above. But I have encountered pastors and teachers – shepherds of the flock of God who willfully flout, ridicule and ignore God’s Word. They lead God’s people astray. They call white black, and black white! And they think there will be no eternal consequence because in their heart of hearts they do not believe in the reality of a personal, holy God.
I have never met a pilot who would hi-jack his own airplane, but I have encountered ministers who hi-jack their congregations and take them to a place they don’t want to go. People walk into a church building expecting to be taught the ways of God and are unexpectedly taken somewhere spiritually they did not intend to go and are taught untruths by false teachers and blind guides. Do you really think there will be no eternal consequence for this?
The penalty for breaking the law of man can be extremely severe and even deadly – think of all the possible outcomes of running a red light. How much more severe are the eternal consequences for the willful and flagrant violation of the law of God in bringing the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah into the Church? Is there no fear of the awesome holiness of God?
Paul said “knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11), and Hebrews tells us, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31).
Not convinced?
Here’s another real-life example: Occasionally in the United States a pilot (usually in a small airplane) will get lost at night or in bad weather and fly a perfectly good aircraft into the ground or a hillside. It has happened so frequently over the years that this event even has a name: CFIT – “Controlled Flight Into Terrain.” The latest tragic example was this past Thanksgiving (2011) in Arizona.
An experienced pilot landed a high-performance, twin-engine aircraft at night in Phoenix and took aboard three of his children and two other adults. He then departed, and in the black of night flew into a mountain east of Mesa, Arizona, killing all onboard. The pilot may make the mistake but the passengers also suffer the consequences.
Nobody in his right mind does this on purpose. Pilots become lost and disoriented. It almost always happens at night with no horizon, or in bad weather, or both. The pilot has lost his situational awareness and can’t see the ground – it’s pitch black, and he can’t see the horizon – but he hopes he is OK. And the outcome is always permanent.
In the same way spiritually, mankind is lost and flying in darkness. We have no spiritual horizon, and the glitzy lights of Hollywood and the world are a dangerous and deadly illusion. God has given us His word as the true horizon and guide for our lives. His laws are our spiritual “instruments” to keep us safe. If we follow Him diligently and obey His word faithfully, we have His promise that we will land safely. But all of us know someone who has not followed God’s law and their life is shipwrecked by the consequences of sin.
There is no forgiveness in aviation for serious errors. The laws of aerodynamics are unbending. If a pilot makes a mistake, he can recover if he has enough airspeed and altitude. But there are mistakes and errors that are not recoverable and disaster is usually the result.
Because I work in a world of strict aerodynamic laws and aviation parameters, I am always astonished and amazed that people think they can ignore and break God’s greater law and get away with no consequence. In ordaining unrepentant homosexuals, the PCUSA is clearly exceeding the pa
rameters of God’s Word and the boundaries of His law!
I know that “men ought always to pray and not to faint,” however the PCUSA has set its course and it is not going to change for two reasons.
First, the PCUSA has become what it is through the entrenched unbelieving, secular-progressive leadership, which has taken over the denomination. It is what it is because those in charge want it that way. They are not going to change. They believe they know better than God and they know best for the denomination.
As a subset of this first point, there are now generations of PCUSA seminary graduates taught to disbelieve the Scriptures who will continue to run the denomination for years to come.
A classic example of this is The Layman article about Union Seminary Professor of Biblical Interpretation Dr. Frances Taylor Gench who was reported in the article to state that “the Bible is “chocked full of repellant, tyrannical texts of terror for women, slaves, Jews, Native Americans [and] gays,” and can be used as “instruments of oppression.” She went on to say “I do not believe that the Bible was divinely dictated or faxed from heaven but rather it is every bit as fully human as was Jesus Himself,” For those who might not quite understand what she was saying here, this is religious doublespeak. It is really series of code words for “The Bible is not divinely inspired and Jesus was just a good man, not the Son of God who pre-existed with the Father before the Incarnation, was born of a virgin, died and rose again.”
Without doubt, Professor Gench inculcates this same unbelief of the Scriptures in her students. That’s the essence of teaching. Harry Emerson Fosdick would have been very proud.
There is second reason the PCUSA is not going to change. For many, many years there have been multiple prophetic voices within the denomination calling for repentance and a return to Biblical faithfulness. The Layman has been a vital part of this prophetic voice and an important, essential platform.
However, instead of repenting and returning, the denomination has – on the contrary – demonstrated its continued disobedience to and disregard of God’s law.
There is a Biblical principle at work here: When God has spoken repeatedly to a wayward person or a group to repent and to turn back Himself – as He has to the PCUSA – and that group or person will neither listen nor repent – there comes a time when God lets them continue in the path they have chosen.
This is brought out clearly in the prophecy of Hosea when he was crying out to backsliding Judah and Israel. He said “Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone” (4:17).
The Lord Jesus Christ states this same precept in Matthew 15:14 when He says of the Pharisees who have seen His miracles, rejected Him and want to kill Him, “Let them alone.” There is an echo of this in Matthew 23:37-38.
Paul expands on this thought in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 when he explains that people perish when they do not receive the love of the truth. In verse eleven he says “For this reason God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie” (NKJV).
Please notice that He doesn’t say that they didn’t know the truth. They may have learned the truth in Sunday school, at youth camp, or in seminary. Romans 1 makes clear that ignorance is no excuse. It is because they didn’t love the truth.
And now we have the PCUSA caught in the delusion that homosexuality – which is clearly and expressly forbidden in both the Old and New Testaments – is to be not only an accepted lifestyle but celebrated as a manner of life worthy of the gospel and church leadership. Save for the Bible itself, which is being ignored, there are no constitutional restraints on sexual practices that restrict church membership or ordination.
According to the wording of the PCUSA’s new Form of Government, every “group” must be guaranteed not only membership but representation in leadership. According to the action of the Board of Pensions to extend benefits to same-sex couples, every church must pay for the sin that the denomination as a whole now approves. And if the overtures headed to the General Assembly this summer are any indication of the will of those left in regard to the definition of marriage, the battle for the PCUSA is lost.
In the words of Carmen LaBerge from How we got ‘here’ … “the Presbyterian public witness becomes indistinguishable from a hard left progressive political agenda”…. If they continue in this direction, at some point – except for religious language and ecclesiastical garments – the PCUSA will be no different from any other group that counts Jesus as just a good man, and one of many paths to God.
As I studied Carmen’s article, I was struck by the fact that one of the reasons many churches have remained in the denomination in the past is “the inordinate riches left to the Presbyterian Foundation.”
When I read this I was reminded of the Biblical account in 2 Chronicles 25. Amaziah, King of Judah, hires an army from Israel to go out to battle for him and pays them a hundred talents of silver. But Israel is wicked and apostate and Amaziah is rebuked by a prophet for hiring these men from Israel. The King’s immediate response is, “But what about my hundred talents of silver I’ve already paid?” The prophet replies, “God is able to give you much more than this.”
Here is an important lesson: God is able to supply all of our needs. His resources are infinite and His riches are not diminished. Let the denomination have the money. If they will not walk in righteousness, it will become a curse to them and not a blessing.
As Carmen’s history explains, this war started long before you and I were born but it has been concluded in our day, and frankly we have to recognize that the other side has won. We are not talking about a country club or a civic organization that has made a decision with which we don’t agree but we can live with. We are dealing with a self-affirming part of the Body of Christ that has embraced immorality and defiled its garments. The denomination has set its course and short of God’s direct intervention to bring historic repentance filled revival, it is not going to be changed.
The essence of the Gospel is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor in the greatest way possible: bringing to them the good news of the love of Jesus Christ. This is what we all should be doing. You can waste a lot of your life, time and energy trying to reform this denomination that somewhere at the essence of its core has become rotten.
Carmen goes on to say …”We are past the point where issues can be ignored … but remaining blissfully ignorant is no longer an option.” It’s time to make a decision and many churches already have done so.
For those who love the Lord Jesus Christ and want to follow Him with a whole heart, it is time to depart from the PCUSA.
Whether by entire presbytery, by congregation, family or individual, it is time to leave.
Whether immediately or in a process of months, it is time to do more than differentiate, it is time to separate.
“Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Chri
st with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
Therefore
“Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you.”
“I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Corinthians 6:14-17
The God who created the heavens and the earth is fully able to lead you and guide you to the place of safety He wants you to go. Ask Him! Seek Him! He will not fail to lead you.
There are other Reformed denominations. There are faithful churches. There are sheepfolds where the Word of God is taught in faithfulness to the Scriptures and where the shepherds serve as under-shepherds of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ alone.
I grant that since God does not leave Himself without a witness, there may be some few who are called to remain in the PCUSA as a prophetic voice for righteousness. If so, you should be very sure of your calling! You should be prepared for grave hardship and continual rejection. You should not be surprised to experience a prophet’s “end,” as described by Jesus in Matthew 23:34. If you don’t know this verse, please look it up; this is very serious business.
But if you don’t have that specific calling – if God is not sending you as an evangelist to the PCUSA or like Jude to snatch some out of the fire – it is time to walk away. If you continue in the PCUSA, how do you not you assent to their embrace of immorality? There is going to be no room for “relief of conscience,” you will be numbered among them.
Back to our airplane metaphor: in an aircraft descending into danger the passengers in the back are stuck. They can’t get out. They are tied to the pilot’s decisions. As the PCUSA continues its downward vector into the spiritual darkness of apostasy what will you do?
Unlike those passengers, you can step out – and you can do it knowing absolutely that the Eternal God is faithful! He will lead you and guide you into a place of safety, and into His marvelous light.
I want to close with the words of C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity at the end of Book Two. The context is the second coming of Christ, but his words seem so applicable to this season in the PCUSA: “For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover the side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.”
The decision is yours. You have to act. Today’s choices and actions have eternal consequences.
If this letter has spoken to you in some way, please feel free to share it with others
Maranatha.
[1] H. E, Fosdick. The Living of These Days. p. 176.