Foxes in the Desert

Looking back on the last few years, there are things that have shocked me, angered me, amused me, and many things that have bewildered me.

Some have deeply saddened me.

When Rev. Jonathan Langerak was given his farewell toast from Heritage PRC after taking the call to another church in the denomination, one of the things he was thanked for was this: “And then also, helping us navigate through a denominational controversy. Thankfully, it did not have much of an impact here locally, with us, but we know it did impact your families…”

How tragic.

A controversy ripped through the denomination, a controversy that had to do with justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant, a controversy in which faithful men and women were cut down left and right, and a controversy that separated wives from husbands and sons from fathers.

It was a controversy about Jesus Christ.

Whether Jesus Christ would be central or whether he would be displaced.

But this controversy “did not have much of an impact” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The entire Bible testifies to the effect of the preaching of the word of God. That word is a fire that consumes and a hammer that breaks the rocks in pieces (Jer. 23:29). It is sharper than a sword, and it divides souls and spirits and joints and marrow and reveals the thoughts and intents of men’s hearts (Heb. 4:12). Whatever it is that Rev. Langerak is doing behind the pulpit is not clear, but one thing he is not doing is bringing Jesus Christ. Jesus said that he came to this earth to bring a sword and to make division. But that word never reached Heritage PRC.

The controversy did not have “much of an impact” at Heritage PRC. There the people were not troubled by the controversy. Because they were never troubled by Christ. Such a man as Rev. J. Langerak will have a long, easy, peaceful, and placid career as a minister in the Protestant Reformed Churches. He will move from church to church, receiving gifts and plaudits along the way, and he will retire with a nice emeritus package, and there will never be a hint of trouble at any of the churches he serves. His life in the ministry will be smooth and easy. (And there are many other young ministers just like him).

At best, the testimony at the end of such a man’s ministry will be that it was hay and stubble, good only to be burned (1 Cor. 3:12-15). And that will be the best that can be said about such a man’s ministry.

For the rest, it does not matter what comes off the pulpits in the Protestant Reformed Churches.

That really is shocking.  

It simply does not matter what a minister says.

From the farcical to the vacuous to the heretical to the jaw-dropping to the blasphemous to the ridiculous, nothing will arouse the ire of Protestant Reformed members or consistories.

Well, almost nothing.

The members of the PRC don’t do rebukes.

They are good with calls to repentance as long as those calls to repentance are not aimed at themselves.

That in itself is ironic.

For a denomination that makes repenting a prerequisite to their being forgiven, you would think they would welcome calls to repent.

Not so much.

On January 19, 2020, Rev. Andy Lanning preached a sermon on Judges 2:1–5 titled “The Tears of Bochim” (you can listen to the sermon here and read the sermon here). In this sermon, Rev. Lanning explained the sin of the Israelites in tolerating the Canaanites’ altars and the blessed reality of Israel’s repentance upon hearing the rebuke of the Lord. Rev. Lanning then applied that text to the Protestant Reformed Churches when he said the following:

But now what about us specifically here in Byron Center? What is the rebuke that comes to us? What is the apostasy that threatens us? And here it is: the threat to us is that we succumb to the enormous pressure that there is upon us as a church, as well as a denomination, to minimize the error that was exposed in 2018. The threat is that we say, “That was no big deal.” The threat is that we have no holy roar in our throats regarding those errors but an unholy silence, an unholy hush that falls over the church and over the denomination. That’s a real threat to the church of Jesus Christ. That’s a real tolerating of the altars of Baal if the errors of the altars of man are minimized.

It was a beautiful sermon, not because of the man who delivered it or because it was any special bit of oratory, but because it was the word of God applied to Byron Center PRC at a time when she desperately needed to hear that word.

In early 2020 it was becoming increasingly clear that the congregation and the denomination were in no mood to deal with the reality of the monstrous sin that the denomination had committed. It had tolerated and defended false doctrine and, in its lust for that false doctrine, had cut down faithful officebearers. Although it was that proud harlot Hope Protestant Reformed Church that led, the entire denomination had been willing and eager participants in this sin. Instead of ignoring the issue like so many other “sermons” emanating from PR pulpits, this sermon addressed the issue.

But the sermon contained a rebuke.

And PR men were in no mood to hear a rebuke.

Rev. Lanning was scheduled for a classical appointment to Unity PRC on March 29.

(Unity PRC was curiously named, since once the preaching at Byron Center PRC had become a little too pointed for many men and women, they had packed their bags and started a daughter congregation. This was only a few months after an overwhelming majority of the congregation had approved the purchase of new land to expand the church building. After their first act of dividing a congregation, they then named themselves Unity, perhaps revealing a sense of humor.)

On March 3, 2020, Unity’s consistory sent a letter to Rev. Lanning. In this letter they informed him that they did not want Rev. Lanning “to preach the sermon ‘The Tears of Bochim’ based on Judges 2:1–5 in our church, nor any other sermon dealing with the recent controversies in our churches.” Why reject this sermon or any other sermon having to do with the controversy? This was the reason they gave: “The reason we do not want any sermons dealing with the recent controversies is because we do not agree with your application, and not because we disagree with your doctrine.”

Consider that for a moment.

A consistory sends a letter to a minister telling him not to preach on any topic having to do with an ongoing doctrinal controversy, and the reason is that they disagree with his application of a sermon.

There is only one possible response to such a letter.

By God’s grace, Rev. Lanning responded the only way a faithful minister of God’s word could respond: by informing them that he “must preach that text and no other.” His letter can be found here.

In the end, Rev. Lanning did not preach at Unity PRC, and when the matter came to Classis East they buried it in legalities that I don’t have the energy or the interest to revisit.

Unity PRC was not the only consistory that muzzled the word of God in this way.

Hudsonville PRC did the same.

They informed Rev. Lanning that he was not welcome to preach on their pulpit.

I found it objectionable that consistories would close their pulpits to the truth. So I wrote letters to Unity PRC and Hudsonville PRC asking for their minutes and supplements that led to their decisions so I could better understand them and protest them if I disagreed. Unity responded by sending me the material, but Hudsonville, in a glaring example of disorder, never responded. That’s one way to handle a possible protest. Ignore it. Perhaps that is not orderly, but it certainly was effective.

The matter with Hudsonville PRC led to an interesting exchange with an elder from that congregation. He called me, furious that I had sent the letter asking for the material, and especially about the fact that I had used 1 Corinthians 1:10 to describe his consistory’s actions. After he had vented for a bit, I said it was good for us to discuss these issues. I asked him what his consistory had done or was doing about the fact that his (then) minister, Rev. Eriks, had written a doctrinal statement that compromised justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant. His response went like this: “Doctrinal statement? I don’t know what that is or what you are talking about.” That was pretty much the end of that conversation.

So a Protestant Reformed minister can bring a lengthy discourse on sleeping, but don’t you dare bring a rebuke or a call to repentance.

Actually, I am not being fair to Rev. Guichelaar. He did call for reformation and repentance in that sermon. Clearly and unmistakably. The entire sermon is found here.

(Rev. Guichelaar is in good company when he lectures on the merits of sleeping. In keeping with the sleep theme, Prof. Griess, at a funeral sermon, once favorably compared the man who had died to a good mattress—not too firm and not too soft.)

Or consider Rev. Mahtani, pastor of Hope PRC. It is common knowledge that a large part of his congregation supports and believes the theology taught by (then) Rev. Overway. Judging charitably, let’s say the other half disagrees and believes Overway was in error. That means that the congregation is divided on justification by faith alone. Rev. Mahtani, politician that he is, can preach in such a way that no one is offended. The congregation can coexist with two starkly different views of justification, which truth is the heart of the gospel.

Rev. Mahtani, like Rev. Jonathan Langerak, may be doing many things, but he is not preaching the Christ of the Bible. If he were to preach justification by faith alone and if he were to condemn the lie that compromised justification by faith alone, which lie was nurtured and defended for many years in that church—led by the consistory—he would be driven out like were the Meyers and others who would not settle for anything less than the gospel.

I use the word politician deliberately to describe Rev. Mahtani. It was Mahtani who weaponized repentance, and he did so in a sermon preached at Byron Center PRC soon after Rev. Lanning was suspended. In a sermon titled “Cleansing From Secret Errors,” Rev. Mahtani made a phony and insincere apology for the role he had played in the controversy. His purpose in apologizing was not because of his brokenness over his sin. Instead, he made the apology to challenge Rev. Lanning—although he didn’t name Rev. Lanning—to repent of sins that Mahtani was convinced that Rev. Lanning had committed.

I know that Mahtani’s apology was insincere and phony not only because when you truly repent, you never then challenge someone else to repent. That is what abusers do. But Rev. Mahtani was exposed as a fraud because of what occurred only a few weeks later, at the meeting of Classis East. If you are truly sorrowful for your role in a controversy that saw a denomination compromise justification by faith alone, you do not then cut down and depose the minister who was warning and rebuking the denomination regarding that sin.

Why give examples from the younger ministers of the denomination, which examples could be multiplied? Because these are the men that Prof. Huizinga pointed to in his speech to the RFPA, who he said will be used by God for the “for the good of the PRC.”

Rev. McGeown is a younger minister and one whom the denomination would point to as being used for the good of the PRC. Look at how much he is writing! He is on the forefront of the PRC, carrying the PRC banner into battle.

He is also a hypocrite.  

In May of this year Rev. McGeown sent out an email that was distributed widely. In this email he made judgments about the condition of First RPC’s church building, as well as about the consistory’s decision to depose a man from the office of elder. A few hours after reading it, I sent Rev. McGeown three emails. The first one is found here, the second one included the reports that the council had commissioned about the condition of the building, and the third was the material that the deposed elder had distributed to the congregation.

My immediate reaction to reading Rev. McGeown’s email was surprise. Rev. McGeown had recently written a three-part series on the RFPA blog titled “Avoiding All Lies and Deceit.” Those articles can be found here. In those articles he wrote things like, “Sometimes we think that lies are harmless, but lies are very damaging.” And “First, the Ninth Commandment forbids ‘that I bear false witness against no man.’  To bear false witness is to speak something untrue about another person. Truth is something that is in accordance with reality. Falsehood is something that is not in accordance with reality.” And, “The word for ‘slanderer’ in the Greek is diabolos, which means devil. That is why the Heidelberg Catechism calls all lies and deceit ‘the proper works of the devil.’”

Reading that, you would think, “Rev. McGeown must really be quite the truth teller!”

Yet Rev. McGeown lied publicly in his email about First Reformed Protestant Church when he wrote what he did about the building and when he wrote that “many members” cannot worship in the building for health reasons.

It was also surprising that Rev. McGeown felt qualified to render a judgment at all about the building or the deposition. By his own admission he had not read the material (“I do not have that email”).

When commenting on the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 43, Rev. McGeown wrote this in his blog about judging rashly: “But how easy it is to be guilty of this! It takes effort to examine a case properly; how easy to jump to rash, unwarranted, even prejudiced, conclusions. There is a very significant Proverb, which we should all take to heart: ‘He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him’ (Prov. 18:17). Do not believe an evil report against someone without strong evidence. Do not spread an evil report about someone, and especially not without strong evidence.”

One would think that “strong evidence” would include reading the material.

Rev. McGeown did exactly that which he warned the people against. This is the definition of hypocrisy according to Merriam Webster: “A feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not: behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel. Especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” Perhaps you prefer the biblical definition. That can be found in Matthew 23:3, “All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do ye not after their works: for they say, and do not.”

Rev. McGeown responded to my emails by apologizing for a portion of what he had written.

What should I do about that?

In the last few years I have accepted two apologies, one from a consistory and one from a leader in the denomination, both of which I now know were completely phony. The men made the apologies because they were political, not because they were sorry. Is Rev. McGeown sorry? I would say probably not. If you lie publicly and make rash judgments publicly, you don’t repent of such by making a private apology.

So when I read Rev. McGeown carrying on in the Standard Bearer or the RFPA blog, I don’t pay any attention to it. And neither should you. He has lectured us against lying and later against making rash judgments. He then went on to lie and make rash judgments. And he has never repented of either. I prefer men that practice repentance over men that only lecture me about it.

I could list many more examples of the folly and vanity of the younger ministers, but that is not necessary.

All you need to know about the younger ministers is that they are willing to tolerate, and live in a denomination that allows Prof. Cammenga to teach this: “Jesus Christ did not personally accomplish all of your salvation.”

Men that will tolerate such and will live peacefully in such a denomination are worthless to the church.

The PRC will look to their younger ministers in vain for help.

Young or old, the ministers in the PRC are all “foxes in the desert,” prophets who “have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord” (Ezekiel 13:4-5).

Nothing is off limits from PR pulpits except for calls to repentance and rebukes.

Having rejected sound doctrine, the PRC now heaps to itself teachers who turn away their ears from the truth and turn them unto fables (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

Prof. Gritters recently gave a speech at Grace PRC on forgiveness (transcript here). A few years ago, Grace PRC was going to sponsor a similar lecture on repentance and forgiveness. It was to be given by (then) Rev. VanOverloop. The reason the elders gave for cancelling the speech was due to how long synod had lasted. If there are any members of Grace PRC left who love truth, they should ask the men who were elders at that time if that indeed was the reason the speech was canceled. That would then give those elders a wonderful opportunity to repent and practice what they, apparently, love to hear preached.

Prof. Gritters in that speech turned the people to fables.

A fable can be defined as a fictitious narrative or statement.

One problem the PRC has with their view of repentance is what do you do about children who die in their infancy? Those children never had a chance to repent, so how can they be forgiven?

Recognizing the difficulty, Prof. Gritters should have turned to the creeds for the answer. The problem is that he had already determined that he would not spend much time using the creeds (“I’m not going to quote the creeds tonight very often.”). (That is understandable, since the creeds do not teach what Prof. Gritters was teaching). In fact, the creeds do answer the question, “What about infants who die in their infancy?” The response of the creeds and therefore of the Reformed faith is simple and is found in Lord’s Day 26, Q&A 70 in answer to the question, “What is it to be washed with the blood and Spirit of Christ?” This: “It is to receive of God the remission of sins freely, for the sake of Christ’s blood, which He shed for us by His sacrifice upon the cross.” The answer is also found in the prayer of thanksgiving at the end of the baptism form. “Almighty God and merciful Father, we thank and praise Thee that Thou hast forgiven us and our children all our sins through the blood of Thy beloved Son Jesus Christ.”

Those children have their sins forgiven because Jesus Christ hung on a cross at Calvary and bore on himself the eternal wrath and judgment of Jehovah against sin, so that that sin is not required at the hand of the infant. The child is forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Instead, Prof. Gritters made something up.

He made up a fictitious narrative, an imaginative story, a fable, which story has no basis in the word of God or the creeds.

He said that after a child enters heaven, that child will be given a voice so that he can then repent of his original sin.

That’s why it’s possible for a baby who dies in infancy, who’s never committed one actual sin, to go to heaven. He’s not been forgiven in the sense that he never heard consciously God say to him, “I don’t hold that sin against you.” He’s an infant; he died in his mother’s womb maybe. But Christ died for his sins; God determined to take him to heaven, and he went to heaven though he didn’t hear in his ear and embrace with his believing heart that declaration of God.

But as I was thinking about that today, I thought hmmm. Maybe that needs to be clarified a little bit in this way. When that little infant, who never spoke one word and never thought any thought, gets to heaven, he is able to speak. And this is what he is going to say: “God, forgive me of my sinful nature. Forgive me of my connection to Adam.” And then God is going to speak to him and declare, “I don’t hold that against you because I put that responsibility on my Son, and he’s forgiven.”—if we may imagine that. That’s when he would hear God say it to him.

Prof. Gritters, and the PRC with him, are being carried away by what John Calvin, in his commentary on 2 Timothy 4:4, called “new inventions.”

(This is to say nothing of the horror of Prof. Gritters going to Grace PRC of all places and using as one of his analogies a daughter who is raped 490 times by a neighbor).

Byron Center PRC is another clear example of judgment being visited upon them.

Rev. Lanning was taken from the pulpit and finally deposed for one reason: he rebuked the members of Byron Center PRC and the denomination and called them to repentance. I know the church visitors (which included, strangely enough, Rev. Clay Spronk), Rev. Bill Langerak and Trinity PRC, and Classis East all spun themselves into knots trying to find something wrong with the sermon. Still, like everyone who plays Twister, they only succeeded in making themselves look foolish.

The sermon was the very word of God to the congregation, and the church killed the minister for it. The PRC needs—and will not receive—a decade’s worth of Jeremiah sermons. Listen to it again—the heart of the elect child of God will again be broken by his own sin in this controversy, and the carnal will gnash his teeth on it.

God promises he will judge the church that rejects his word.

His judgment was swift.

Four weeks after taking Rev. Lanning from their pulpit, the consistory and membership of Byron Center PRC were judged by having to hear a man sing a campfire song from their pulpit, making himself look foolish and making a mockery of the pulpit.

You don’t want the gospel, elders of Byron Center PRC? Then you will get a clown show.

But now they have Prof. Dykstra, a professor from the seminary.

Within six months of his being there, he had two sermons he had to either apologize for or “clarify.”

The first time was after he preached this (full sermon here).

Apparently, Prof. Dykstra was not aware of the Apostle Paul’s confession in Romans 7:19 when he said, “The evil which I would not, that I do.”

Someone must have objected, because a Sunday or two after that sermon, Prof. Dykstra was going to give a clarification. But before he did that, he instructed the sound technician to turn off the livestream.

Do you know how shameful that is? A former professor in the seminary preaches false doctrine, but when he says he is going to clarify it, he turns off the livestream. Why? Afraid you might receive some criticism? If you are going to give a clarification, wouldn’t you want the world to hear it, especially since the original sermon went out publicly on SermonAudio? Doesn’t the truth matter even a little, so that the desire of your heart is that the truth is proclaimed?

Here is the truth of the matter. Prof. Dykstra meant exactly what he said in that sermon, and he isn’t sorry at all that he said it. He believed what he preached. If he were truly sorry, he wouldn’t have tried to hide his explanation.

As to the members of Byron Center PRC, they just take it. Whatever shenanigans or games or songs or chicanery takes place from their pulpit, they tolerate it. They just take it.  

And they don’t just take it, they love it.

They eat it right up.

Just as they were told they would. 

“You might have a church left. You might. But you won’t have the word of the Lord there. You’ll have a perversion of it. And you’ll love it. You’ll think it tastes good. You’ll eat it up. And you’ll choke to death on it, and your children and your grandchildren will choke to death on it” (Rev. A. Lanning, Jeremiah 23:4, 14 sermon, delivered on November 15, 2020 to Byron Center PRC).