Brethren,

It’s hard to know how to start this letter. As I look back through my 88 years, much of which was spent in the office as elder, I am deeply saddened by the situation we currently find ourselves in as churches once again. I went through the 1953 controversy when “conditional theology” raised its ugly head. That was a hard fought battle for the truth, but it was a serious error in which everyone knew what was at stake. Sadly, we lost half of our churches and half of our ministers. They had the Concordia back then. At the end of the trouble, they were all set to start a new organization of churches. “Where are they now?”

The first I came across the recent and current trouble, was at Hope Church. Sitting in the back pew of church, I observed a couple that were watching the minister like a hawk watching a rabbit. From time to time, they would nod at each other and quickly write something down in a notebook. Sadly, I also witnessed this same behavior back in 1953. I mentioned what I had witnessed to my relatives who attend Hope Church, and they immediately knew who I was talking about.

We all know the events that took place at classis and synod until this issue was settled. However, that wasn’t good enough for some people. Enter the “Sword and Shield”! In this pamphlet it was and is still written, that the Protestant Reformed Churches are the false church because it is believed that salvation is obtained by works righteousness. That sure was a new one to me! I’ve taught Catechism for many years, and we all know that salvation is given to us by grace. The more I read, the more the old ways become more apparent. When points of doctrine are taken out of context, one can make anything sound completely different then “it’s real meaning”. The Ole Devil doesn’t change all that much, does he? He loves it when this is done to God’s Word. So after all this time, “Congratulations” you have been able to cause a lot of controversy. Churches have been destroyed, families have been broken up, mission’s work has come to an end—“the Devil loves this”, and you have used the old straw-man method of making something false stand up and then burning it down! People are now going to church, not to hear what God has to say, but to see what they can catch the minister saying, which could then be twisted around so that he can hopefully be destroyed. No need to go and talk to the minister in the way of Christian brotherly love, for it was said in a public place, therefore take it immediately to Classis! Where is brotherly love? All our ministers and elders have a target on their backs. Not sure how it is out East? but out here it is NOT considered good form to shoot people in the back.

Ministers are God’s representatives and God’s mouth pieces to us. When we look at what they have for their life’s work, compared to the rest of us: they have families as we do, a 24 hour job, they must come up with 100 plus sermons a year, take part in all the work of the churches in general, and work with all the members of the flock and their individual needs. I really don’t know how they do it. God gives them special grace to bare this as well as these current hard times. Now on top of all this, they have one more great problem…“they are humans”! So, if you wait and sit in church like a Cooper’s Hawk waiting for a chance at a rabbit; you’ll probably get a chance for them to have a slip of tongue. How many of you can preach 100 plus sermons without ever saying anything wrong or not quite right? How many times have you spoke in a speech or a discussion, and afterwards thought about how you could of said it differently or more precisely?

What have we learned from all this? First of all Classis and Synod should first look at God’s Word and what it says about the specific case that is before them. A great deal of trouble can be avoided this way. When God tells us that women are to be silent in the legal matters of the church, we don’t say: “Well she has the office of believer!” The women in Paul’s days tried this as well. Paul didn’t say “Monsma and Vandellen” says this or that. You have done that, and now we see what a terrible price we have all had to pay. Go ahead with man’s reasoning, and I’ll go with what God has very plainly written to us about this.

Back in 1953 they didn’t even have the internet blogs to sit and gossip on. The least little thing can be blown completely out of proportion. A person doesn’t have to live long these days, to see what a force for evil the internet has become. The thing that makes me feel bad is how easy people can be riled up by this tool of the Devil, forget their upbringing and quickly believe all that is being misconstrued about the Protestant Reformed Churches.

When my children talk to me about these troubling things and wonder where it all will go, I tell them about 1953 and how half of the churches’ people, ministers, and buildings were taken, giving them a good start at a new denomination. Yet….where is that denomination now? The most important question is…“where are that denomination’s children?” They are all gone. All those I knew and grew up with, lost all their children. How terribly sad. Paul warns us in the Bible about the wolves that will rise up, not from the world, but from out of the flock that will seek to destroy God’s church. The Devil will come to us as an angel of light.

Now today, we have three ministers raising a lot of trouble through lies and false charges. We remember that God is in control. Go to church! Listen to what God has to say to you by means of His ministers, sing praises to His glorious Name and be thankful that our salvation is all of grace, knowing that if it were to depend on our works, which are as filthy rags, we would be in terrible trouble.

That leads me to the problem of what to do with the “Sword and Shield”. I have been taking them up to our elk camp at 9500 ft. to use as back up toilet paper in my out-house, but to no avail. At least the paper itself is high quality, but this makes it rather painful to use. However, it does work great to kindle my wood fires in my stove in the shop each morning. Now that winter is past, I don’t need or want any more of them. Thank you!

Regards,

Ray Ezinga

May all things be done in meekness and in love…

You have my permission to print this in the Sword and Shield

REPLY

Reading your letter was like sitting around a campfire in the mountains listening to an old-timer spin a great yarn of a tale. (And by the way, I mean no disrespect when I call you “old-timer.” Unless I miss my guess, I think you wouldn’t mind being described that way yourself, up at your elk camp, with your reminiscing on your 88 years and Cooper’s Hawks and “the Ole Devil.” If your letter doesn’t sound like a man who relishes being an old-timer, then I don’t know what does.)

Like any great yarn, your letter tells a fascinating tale. And like most great yarns, not a word of your letter is true.

You see, in your tale as you tell it, the problem these past years in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) has been the bad behavior of some bad folks, especially those out East. There was that couple with their notebook in Hope church who watched the minister like a hawk watching a rabbit. (Ah, yes, but there was also a gentleman in Hope church that day from out West who took up his high perch in the back pew, from which he could keep a keen eye on said couple, after which he made a meal out of them to his relatives, so that one wonders who really was the hawk and who really was the rabbit in this story after all. But let us pass over that so as not to interrupt the tale.)

Then there were those loveless ole upstarts at Sword and Shield who accused the Protestant Reformed Churches of teaching that salvation is obtained by works-righteousness. And behind these ole upstarts was the “Ole Devil” twisting everything all out of context, so that poor ministers and elders kept getting shot in the back. Really, though, everyone knows that salvation is by grace! And everyone especially knows that the Protestant Reformed Churches could never teach anything other than salvation by grace! (Ah, yes, but Synod 2018 said that there was “doctrinal error” in the PRC and that the doctrinal error displaced Christ, compromised justification by faith alone, compromised…what’s that? You’ve heard this already and you’re dead sick of hearing it all the time and you want to get back to the story? Okay, then, never mind.)

Then there were those loud women who wrote protests. Women! Writing protests! ‘Nuff said. (Ah, yes, but where were all the men? Especially men who had lived a good long time in the churches, and had spent many of their years as watchmen on the walls of Zion in the office of elder, and who fancied themselves to be real men out in their camps. Men who would probably know what to do if a lion or a wolf came into the elk camp. But men who didn’t even pucker out the smallest blurp of a warning on their trumpets when lions and wolves stole into the sheepfold of Christ. Methinks these men not only like the church’s women absolutely silent, but they like themselves and all the church’s men silent as well. Life is just smoother that way. Yes, yes, I know, back to the tale.)

Then there were those pesky bloggers. Just when everything was being nicely swept out of sight under the rug, a new post would appear and throw everything into the uncomfortable glare of the light. (Ah, yes, but what does anyone have to say about the actual content of the blogs? The blogs have revealed the grossest false doctrine, corruption, hierarchy, schism, and all manner of other wickedness in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Those revelations have been supported by pages and pages of documents. But of course, no one can say anything against the actual content, and so they resort to muttering about “gossip” and “completely blown out of proportion” and “riled up by this tool of the Devil.” So, let us clamp our hands ever more firmly over our eyes so as not to see the blogs, and let us continue the tale.)

In your tale as you tell it, the problem was strictly the bad behavior of bad folks, but the problem was not false doctrine. Emphatically, the problem was not false doctrine. Now if you want to talk about false doctrine, you’ve got to go all the way back to 1953. There was false doctrine. There was some real conditional theology going around then. Everyone knew what was at stake, and that’s what a real hard-fought battle for the truth looks like. But that was the last time that false doctrine entered the Protestant Reformed Churches, and that’s the last time that false doctrine ever could enter the PRC. Today, it’s bad behavior. Not false doctrine but bad folks.

Well, sir, nice story. It is an interesting yarn, but it is bunk. It is a tall tale.

The fact of the matter is that the problems in the PRC were and are false doctrine. What more can I write that has not already been written in hundreds and thousands of pages? Here is the theology of the Protestant Reformed Churches today in a single sentence: If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do. That was written in 2018, but I don’t put it in quotes or cite the source for it because I don’t mean it as a quotation of one sentence that a man once happened to write. I mean it as the summary of the whole theology of the Protestant Reformed Churches today. The sermons and the writings all drive home that doctrine: If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do. After all of the qualifications and explanations and evasions have been made, that theology still stands in the PRC: If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do.

That theology killed a denomination.

Which brings us back to your tale. It is really a bedtime story. After the telling is finished, everyone will stretch and yawn and climb sleepily and happily into their tents. Their consciences will be salved with the knowledge that all is well in the Protestant Reformed Churches and that nothing could ever be really, truly wrong in the PRC. The problems that the PRC had were just some bad people doing some bad things, but we all know deep down that the Protestant Reformed Churches could never depart from the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. And when the tent catches fire with the burning embers of man’s doing for his salvation, no one will know. Your bedtime story and a hundred like it will have hushed everyone into a deep sleep. They all will be dreaming happy dreams of grace, which they will have wrongly come to understand means that God makes something of a man, so that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do.

The tents are on fire, but who wants to deal with that? Let’s have a story instead.

Enjoy elk camp.

And stay warm.