When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they did so with a mixed multitude who caused the Israelites grief all the way to their entry into Canaan. The people had murmured against Moses before they even crossed the Red Sea, accusing God’s prophet of leading them into the wilderness to die. They accused Moses and desired the slavery of Egypt when they first grew hungry in the wilderness. When all their needs were miraculously supplied, they lusted for the leeks and garlic of Egypt. When they were given angel’s food, they loathed it and lusted for meat. The mixed multitude and the unbelieving Israelites who desired Egypt were to the distress of the church. By killing them in the wilderness, God delivered his church. “With many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Cor. 10:5).

Currently the days grow darker, and while the false church trumpets advances of her so-called Christianity, we are no longer in the days when the church can be counted as a multitude. Instead, we are as the generations just prior to Noah, when the church was being made ever smaller until only eight souls were saved by water. Even though a small number of individuals came into the Reformed Protestant Churches, with us was a mixed multitude who did not seek the heavenly Canaan but whose treasure is in this world. The church needed to be delivered from that mixed multitude, and she had no way of delivering herself. By a wonder of God’s grace, he sent out from his church those who never had any part with him and his church. “They went out from us…that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (1 John 2:19). God is good, and his church has been delivered!

Now on their way back to Egypt, the leaders of a new fellowship of apostates have created a blog. With their inaugural post they express their love of the world by trumpeting their carnal doctrine of the antithesis.¹ They claim as their champion a certain Rev. Stuart Pastine, who was trained and ordained by the Christian Reformed Church and is emeritus in the United Reformed Churches. His doctrine of the antithesis is one that fits well within the Christian Reformed and United Reformed churches and their doctrine of common grace, by which they made common cause with the world. It was against that doctrine of common grace that our Reformed fathers trumpeted the doctrine of the antithesis. In doing so our fathers were charged with being Anabaptists, as the Reformed Protestant Churches are now being charged.

The article by Reverend Pastine is long, but his main argument is relatively simply stated: In the new dispensation, it is no longer the calling of “Israel” to “dwell in safety alone.” Instead, that calling is “abrogated” (repealed or done away) by the command to “go out into all the world” and preach the gospel. While in the old dispensation the church was at literal war with the world around her, “that specific, visible, and tangible representation of the kingdom and it’s [sic] antithesis…ended when our Lord was crucified.” Of course, there remains an antithesis, but according to Reverend Pastine the antithesis remains entirely spiritual. Pastine’s idea of a spiritual antithesis appears to be that the antithesis, while present, does not have a direct effect on personal relationships, unless one is dealing with the creature whom Pastine describes as a “known false teacher.” Such a false teacher the Christian must reject. But with all who are deceived by false doctrine, we must continue to build and seek personal and social relationships, waiting for and taking the opportunity to “pull them out of the fire.” Except with regard to false teachers, Christians are to make no “final judgments.”

Live Alone in Safety: A Spiritual Reality in the Old Testament

Reverend Pastine claims that the church no longer has the calling to “dwell alone in safety,” since this command was abrogated at the death of Christ. In making this claim Reverend Pastine acts as a destroyer in the church and puts any who will follow his teaching in grave danger. He does not interpret correctly the abrogation of the types and shadows as it applies to the antithesis, and as a result he comes up with an entirely new doctrine of the antithesis. Over against the claim of Reverend Pastine, God does keep his church in safety, and he does so by her separation from the world. That separation had not been established by the law; therefore, that separation was not annulled with the rending of the veil and annulment of the ceremonial laws.

The types and shadows of the law in the Old Testament were not arbitrary institutions of God. They were physical representations of the spiritual reality of the antithesis that already existed in the old dispensation. God would have his church dwell alone. To accomplish that, he put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. God would have his church dwell alone; thus the descendants of Cain rose up to seek and to kill Enoch. God would have his church dwell alone; thus he sealed all eight of the elect remnant inside the ark to save them from the wicked world. God would have his church dwell alone; thus he brought Abraham to Canaan to live in tents. Long before Israel was given the law, the calling of the church had been to dwell alone, in enmity against the world. Long before Israel had physical borders and used bronze swords, the church had been dwelling alone. Remember, the antithesis does not have its origin in the law, or even in the fall of Adam, but the antithesis first came in the command of God warning Adam against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The law of Sinai along with the institution of borders for the nation in Canaan were teachers to Israel, making the fact of her separation from the world so obvious that the Israelites saw it everywhere they went, and showing them that in this separation was their safety. However, it was not the case that Israel in the old dispensation had physical separation only by borders and swords or that her physical separation was replaced with a spiritual separation in the new dispensation. Rather, both the physical separation and the spiritual separation existed simultaneously, and the physical separation served the purpose of pointing to Israel’s spiritual separation. “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God” (Deut. 7:6).

So what was the spiritual reality of dwelling alone that the fortified borders and bronze swords taught old testament Israel? The spiritual reality was that believers are not to seek fellowship with unbelievers. “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph. 5:11). Do not seek fellowship. I state this very explicitly because fellowship is a noun. True fellowship exists between those who are united in Christ; fellowship is not something that is created by mutual parties. You do not and cannot create fellowship; God leads you to find it. While it is impossible for a believer to have fellowship with an unbeliever, it is possible for a believer, walking in a sinful way, to seek fellowship where there is none. Outside of Christ, a believer might try to live in fellowship with an unbeliever, but it will not work. When the child of God seeks fellowship where there is none, he ends up grieving the Spirit within him and pining in misery.

Old testament Israelites were called to live in their day-to-day lives as friends of God, in opposition to all that is not of God. It was not only the case that they were to guard their borders, but they were also to guard their relationships. The Holy Spirit pointed to a major source of the Israelites’ problems in their wilderness wanderings when noting that as they left Egypt “a mixed multitude went up also with them” (Ex. 12:38). The intermarriage of the Israelites with the Egyptians was a source of constant misery. Throughout the rest of Old Testament history, Israel was constantly kicking against that calling to dwell alone. Even after the return of the captives in the days of Nehemiah, the church was bold in her relationships with the ungodly and needed to be reproved. The law itself pointed to this spiritual reality, making it clear that God’s people should not spare their own families when it came to their unbelief. Rather God’s people were to separate themselves from wickedness. Solomon taught his son that “a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20). As Paul wrote, “What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” (2 Cor. 2:15).

Companionship with Fools

Against the spiritual reality of the antithesis in the Old Testament and the New Testament, Reverend Pastine encourages believers to seek “personal contacts, reasoning in homes, even social visits to maintain those personal contacts.” His arguments for doing so are weak. Worse, he fails to deal with the strongest scriptural and confessional arguments against his position.

Reverend Pastine puts a great deal of weight on the fact that God no longer calls the races of the Gentiles “unclean.” Because God directed the church in the great commission to bring the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike, this requires the church no longer to think of herself as living separate or alone. “What was previously set apart is no longer set apart.” Reverend Pastine makes this not about the preaching of the gospel but about “associating with people who were formerly unclean.” For Reverend Pastine this means that clearly we must not live separately from the world of sin and unbelief. Rather, we must associate, socialize, and maintain relationships with unbelievers for the sake of bringing the gospel.

The problem is that for all Reverend Pastine’s parroting the word “unclean,” he does not actually deal with what the word means in the Old Testament. As a result, he completely misses the point when God said, “[Do] not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28).

God is holy, and God in his election of grace made Israel holy and set her apart for himself. As a result of her peculiar place as the possession of the Lord, Israel was to remain separate from the Gentiles, who were unclean by their nature. Israel was holy. The Israelites were no different from the Gentiles by nature, which God needed to show Israel through the ritual cleansing of the Old Testament. However, the Israelites were set apart positively as those whom God delighted to save. The Gentiles were unclean, set apart negatively as the reprobate whom God delighted to destroy. The gospel did not go to the Gentiles, except in rare cases to show Israel that a time would come when she would be rejected, and God would gather his church from all nations. As a rule the gospel only came to Israel, and as a rule the Gentiles were damned.

When God told his church not to call the Gentiles unclean, what he was telling her is that the old distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, holy and unholy, clean and unclean, no longer applied to the preaching of the gospel. That was the immediate context of the calling to Peter, and that was also the battle that continued in the early church: Will the Jews and Gentiles in the church be separated? Must the Gentiles keep the Old Testament laws? Should Peter eat separately from the Gentiles in Antioch?

When God told his church not to call the Gentiles unclean, he certainly was not getting rid of the separation between elect and reprobate that had been established in Eden. Reverend Pastine tries to maintain this, and he is careful to state that the great commission does not warrant “fellowship” or “agreement” with unbelievers. However, he claims it does warrant “contact,” “personal contact,” “social visits,” “association,” and “keeping company” with unbelievers. All of this is not only allowed, but it is also important and desirable because this is the way that we “teach and promote the gospel truth by word and deed.” In this Reverend Pastine breaks the law—the law of cause and effect. It makes me think that Reverend Pastine, for all his writing about the antithesis, has never actually experienced the antithesis. He has no idea of what effect it actually has. Reverend Pastine is lawless. He breaks the law of reality.

When God established the antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, he did not call it antithesis. He called it “enmity,” that is, hatred. God established hatred between the spiritual seed of the woman and the spiritual seed of the serpent. Yet Reverend Pastine pretends that a believer can befriend an unbeliever, “promote the gospel truth,” and not have the effect that hatred is stirred up in the unbeliever against the believer. What unreality! God said that the word divides and creates enmity. Reverend Pastine says that the believer creates friendships so that he can bring the word. What unbelief! I can think of two possible explanations: Either Reverend Pastine does not understand the gospel, so what he brings to unbelievers is not the gospel and therefore creates no enmity; or Reverend Pastine knows the gospel, but he has never brought the gospel in all its sharpness to bear on unbelief.

Judge

After encouraging non-fellowshiping, social company-keeping with unbelievers, Reverend Pastine makes a curious exception. In order to stay in line with the biblical texts, he tells believers that they still ought to “separate from those who are known false teachers.”

Curious. I wonder, how does Reverend Pastine expect believers to know whether a person is a known false teacher versus a person merely being “deceived by false doctrine”? Are teachers only those who are ordained, or are they perhaps limited to officebearers? Or could a teacher in a school be considered a false teacher? Could a false teacher be a parent who teaches his children a false doctrine? Or could a known false teacher be anyone who lives by false doctrine, teaching it by his or her life? And who is to judge whether a teacher of false doctrine is a “known” teacher of false doctrine? Is this judgment to be made only by the church? Or may any believer make this “known” judgment? If we are to take such radically different behaviors, depending on whether one is a “known false teacher” or not, I would have expected Reverend Pastine to provide some guidance in this.

Contrary to his claim, there is no biblical distinction between “known false teachers” and those who are deceived by false doctrine. Reverend Pastine invents this distinction in order to serve his unbiblical teaching of the antithesis. He does so against scripture, which teaches that there is no such distinction. Rather than distinguish between false teachers and those who are deceived, the Holy Spirit regularly identifies false teachers as those who themselves have been deceived! Why did not all the Israelites obtain that for which they sought? Because “the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded” by God (Rom. 11:7). Indeed, the minds of all who do not believe, according to the Holy Spirit, have been blinded (2 Cor. 4:4). Every man who is carried away by false doctrine is deceived by it, because it comes from the father of lies, the deceiver. His deceit? Ye shall be as God. The only distinction that may be made, also according to these texts, is the distinction of election and reprobation.

Instead of giving guidance regarding when a person should be considered a “known false teacher,” Reverend Pastine does the opposite and encourages believers not to pass judgment. The believer “rejects the life of sin and the denial of God’s truth…but we do not…reject the sinners.” His reason is that any rejection of “the sinners…who remain in a false church…involves final judgment.” And final judgment “awaits the return of Christ.”

There is a leap here in the idea of “final judgment,” which is a failure in logic that invalidates his conclusion. Of course, we agree that when Christ returns on the last day, he will bring the revelation of God’s righteous predestination of sinners in the final judgment. However, the fact of a final judgment by Christ on his return does not negate the calling of believers to judge sin—and sinners—in this life. That impenitent sinners themselves are to be rejected should be abundantly clear from the following verses: “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20); “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3:10); “I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Rom. 16:17); and other passages of scripture. The judgment and rejection of impenitent sinners, however, does not imply or require that this judgment be “final.” Even the most powerful form of rejection of impenitent sinners, that of the judgment of the church in excommunication, is not considered a “final judgment” in the sense spoken of by Reverend Pastine. That most powerful judgment allows—no, even demands—the sinner’s repentance. I pass over the apparent exceptions in scripture of those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and for whom there may be a final judgment in this life. While there is life, there is hope of repentance. To judge the sin and the sinner does not in any way imply that one makes a “final judgment.”

Once again, Reverend Pastine wrongly divides the word of truth.

“Specifically Defined in Our Confessions”

Reverend Pastine thinks his doctrine of the antithesis is open for discussion because “the antithesis is not specifically defined in our confessions.” This is false on the plainest reading of the confessions, which are abundantly clear on the matter of the antithesis.

The Belgic Confession in article 28 calls all believers not only to join themselves to the true church but also to “separate themselves from all those who do not belong to the church” (Confessions and Church Order, 61). I do not know how the creeds can be clearer about the calling of believers to live apart from unbelievers. Over against this how can it be claimed that the calling to live alone—separate—no longer applies in the new dispensation?

Reverend Pastine claims, as if it were as plain as day, that in the New Testament “no unbeliever can just walk into the true Israel.” He states this supposedly over against the fact that Old Testament Israel had physical borders and that one could physically step over the border into Canaan. This statement betrays a false view of the church, but the statement can be expected from someone who refuses to join the true church. Reverend Pastine should not need the creeds to show him that his statement is ridiculous. All he would need to do is to ask himself, what is “Israel” in the New Testament? The answer is obvious to all. The church! The Reformed creeds make it even more obvious. The whole article 29 of the Belgic Confession is given to help believers know the physical representation of the true church. It is a physical place that believers join, where they unite with each other in worship, the pure preaching is audibly proclaimed, the sacraments are purely administered, and proper discipline is maintained. The believer can have, must have, and does have a fervent desire to “just walk into” that true church. Many unbelievers also “just walk into” the true church, until the preaching of the word and discipline divides them away from her. This true church is “easily known and distinguished” from the false church (Confessions and Church Order, 64). Reverend Pastine knows it and has been kicking against it for years. Why is he still apart from the church? He should just walk into it!

Reverend Pastine’s discourse on the antithesis is not beautiful, as it is claimed by the fellowship of apostates who have left the Reformed Protestant Churches. But his discourse is false doctrine in which he himself has been deceived and by which he deceives. He does not deal with the antithesis as it has cut through history since before the establishment of the law. He does not understand the spiritual reality of the antithesis in the Old Testament, and so he wrongly applies the abrogation of the law to the antithesis. He does not deal with the reality of enmity that was established by the antithesis since the days of Abel. He does not deal with the scriptural and creedal basis for the antithesis.

Reverend Pastine is a false teacher. He must repent of his false doctrine of the antithesis and begin to live in the truth.

“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33).