The Antithetical Existence of the Church

Introduction

I want to thank the council of First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan (FORPCB) for granting me the opportunity and privilege of speaking to you on the topic “The Antithetical Existence of the Church.”¹ This subject that I was asked to speak on puts us squarely in the locus of ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is the study of the doctrine of the church. Or to put it differently, ecclesiology is the study of where the Holy Spirit applies salvation to the elect sinner. Ecclesiology follows the locus of soteriology, which is the study of the application of the benefits of Jesus Christ to the elect sinner by the Holy Spirit. The subject of this speech is a necessary one. Not only does the doctrine of salvation suffer assault by the false theology of justification by faith and works, but the doctrine of the church suffers assault as well. Those who refuse to leave a false church and join a true church and who reject the headship and authority of Christ in the preaching and discipline deny the doctrine of the church.

Up to this point in my ministry, I have committed much of my time, preaching, and writing to the doctrine of the antithesis. However, I have not had the opportunity until now to consider the doctrine of the antithesis from the view of the church as the body of Jesus Christ separated out of the world and called into communion with him. The antithesis is the spiritual separation of the light from the darkness. To understand the antithesis one must understand the covenant as a relationship of friendship and fellowship with God in Jesus Christ. The antithesis is simply the other side of the covenant. God took you into his own covenant life in Jesus Christ and separated you out of the fellowship of the world. How can light have fellowship with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? From beginning to end the existence of the church in the world is antithetical. Her very name church indicates her spiritual separation from the world and consecration unto the living God. Implied in the mother promise of Genesis 3:15—“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel”—is the promise of warfare and hatred between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. It is the promise of warfare that God has placed between his church and the world.

The antithetical existence of the church is bound up in the high calling of God, as is taught in 1 Peter 2:9: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The source and foundation of the church is the election of God, not as a scattering of individuals but as she is chosen to be a holy nation in Jesus Christ, her head. God calls by his saving call in the gospel and gathers his elect people by his word and Spirit. The purpose is that the church shows forth God’s praises and glorifies him. Her name church, her gathering, her essence, her purpose, her message, her battle, and her weapons all indicate powerfully the position she is to assume toward the world of the ungodly and the apostate. The Reformed confessions, especially Lord’s Day 21 and Belgic Confession articles 16 and 27–29, and many passages in scripture including but not limited to Genesis 3:15; 2 Corinthians 6:14–18; 1 Peter 2:9; James 4:4; and Jude 3–4 all teach the antithetical existence of the church. God called his people out of the world of darkness, gathering them into a manifestation of the body of Christ and drawing them into saving fellowship with himself. The church, being of the party of God in the world, assumes a position against all that glorifies man and not God.

The Church’s Name

The name church in the New Testament means called out. In the Greek the word is ekklésia. We hear in that Greek word the word election. The very essence of the church is the election of God. We make a distinction between the church invisible and the church visible. The church invisible is the total number of the elect chosen by God to be Christ’s body, which at any point in time is the totality of the church latent, militant, and triumphant. We sometimes call this the universal church, as she is made up of all nations, tribes, tongues, and people from the beginning to the end of the world. This church is invisible, known only to God, and each member is joined in spiritual union to Christ her head.

The church visible is the body of Jesus Christ as she is manifested in the institute. She has members, officebearers, creeds, and preaching. For both the church invisible and the church visible, the essence and heart of the church is election. The church is the company of the predestinated. Although tares—ungodly, unbelieving reprobates—are mixed in the institute, that does not take away from the essence of the church, but God places those tares in the sphere of the church so that they serve the growth of the wheat.

Election is not just God’s choice of some mere individuals, but it is God’s choice of individuals to be the perfectly formed body of Jesus Christ, the head of the church. That is what the apostle is teaching in 1 Peter 2:9 when he says, “Ye are…an holy nation.” Peter references national Israel as she was the church. Israel was God’s peculiar people. The heart of Israel was election. In Israel was Mount Zion, Jerusalem, the temple, the priests, the sacrifices, the holy of holies, the king, and all the subjects and citizens of the kingdom. Israel was a nation joined together as one body and one kingdom. She stood in a position of hostility to all the nations that surrounded her. There were the apostate Edomites. There were the uncircumcised Philistines. Later there were the apostate ten tribes that had departed from the kingdom of David. Always true Israel was at war with the surrounding nations. When Israel refused to war and tried to make peace with them, there was trouble. When the church tried to form alliances and peace treaties, she just about brought the kingdom of Judah to her knees. I would argue strongly that there is no greater danger than false ecumenism. Such false ecumenism at the hands of Martin Bucer almost sold out the entire Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The church of the New Testament is the Israel of God, “an holy nation.” This is the death-blow to all dispensationalists, who would seek to divide the people of God into a kingdom-people of the Old Testament and a church-people of the New Testament. The church is one as her head is one, her faith is one, the Spirit is one, the covenant is one, and salvation is one. She is made up of those who were chosen by God in eternity in love and grace to be tempered together as the body of Christ. Not one of God’s elect can be plucked out, and not one more can be added, otherwise the beauty of that perfectly decreed and ordered body would be marred and disfigured.

That the church is a “royal priesthood” does not refer to the priesthood found in the ceremonies and laws of the Old Testament. Instead, believers have access unto God and his communion and fellowship through the new and living way, that is, through the flesh of Jesus Christ, their head. Believers are consecrated unto God in true faith, by which faith they live antithetical lives over against the darkness out of which they have been called. The church has been called out of darkness. Darkness is all men as they fell in Adam. Darkness is sin, lust, wickedness, perversion, and hatred of God and the neighbor. Darkness is the nature of all men, believers included. When the light came into the world, the darkness comprehended not that light, Jesus Christ. The darkness is the threefold enemy of sin, Satan, and the world, which includes the rank ungodly and the apostate ungodly. The church, made up of believers and their seed in the institute, has been called out of darkness. God’s people had condemnation in Adam. They have been called out of the damning fellowship with their first head. They are called into saving fellowship with their head Jesus Christ, judged righteous in him, and given his quickening Spirit.

The church is called into God’s light and into fellowship with God by his Spirit and word—by the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified. This body is gathered out of the world by that gospel according to the election of grace. Christ Jesus comes as the good shepherd, and his sheep hear his voice and follow him. The gathering of the church is implied in this calling of God. The church’s very existence and gathering as a spiritual body of Christ in a world that cannot comprehend the light indicates her spiritual separation. This separation is in principle spiritual. Yet we cannot divide man into two parts. Man is one creature, created by the one act of God’s forming him from the dust of the ground and breathing into his nostrils the breath of the life. This spiritual separation manifests itself in a physical way. The child of God knows it to be his duty and obligation to join the true church wheresoever God has established it. The child of God worships in the true church with his family. He does not remain in the false church. He does not worship in a false church where God is made nothing and man is made something. That would be the outward manifestation of his consent and agreement with the lie. The outward manifestation of membership in a true church is the indication of consent and agreement with the truth as it is preached and confessed in that church.

The denial of the doctrine of the church often begins at the point of the church’s gathering. The implication of the doctrine of the gathering of the church makes men scoff. Lord’s Day 21 teaches that God by his word and Spirit gathers his church. Election demands calling, and calling requires the gathering of all those whom God has elected and called. God’s people will be gathered into true churches. If God does not gather men and women into true churches, the ultimate explanation is that he has reprobated men and women, and he will judge them for their unbelief of the gospel and all their sins. In an attempt to console themselves against that fact, men argue that there is some Christ and some Spirit in other churches. They say, “There are drippings of the gospel in the false church” and “God saves in an apostatizing church.” These men refuse to separate themselves from that which calls itself church but has departed from the cardinal doctrines of God’s word. These men are the “fearful, and unbelieving” of Revelation 21:8. The doctrine of the church forces believers to judge those who stay in a false church, often loved ones and family, as unbelievers. “Though they boast of Him in words, yet in deeds they deny Jesus” (Heidelberg Catechism A 30, in Confessions and Church Order, 95). “Deeds” in part is the refusal to stand in a position of hostility against the world, therefore denying the covenant, the church, and the antithesis. If one confessed Jesus Christ as the only savior and truly believed in him, that one would join the church where Christ speaks.

The Reformed churches faced this issue early on with those who professed to believe the same doctrine as the Reformed churches but stayed in the Roman Catholic Church. John Calvin sharply condemned what he called the Nicodemite error—the view that church membership was something optional when to join the true church meant loss, hardship, and even death at the hands of the state. The Nicodemites participated in all the outward rites and worship of the Roman Catholic Church while professing to renounce it and believe the gospel of justification by faith alone without works. Calvin pointed out that the outward manifestation of their lives indicated their consent with the doctrine and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Calvin called for the Nicodemites to separate from all that called itself church and to join the true congregation in Geneva or to form the church anew, even though the edicts of princes be against it and though the Nicodemites would likely suffer death. Many mocked Calvin for this conviction. The Nicodemites responded to Calvin with a slander: “One cannot get to paradise except by way of Geneva.”²

The same slander is hurled against First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan and against the Reformed Protestant Churches for their high estimation and love of the doctrine of the church. Family and friends who stay in a false church or go to no church make that slander against the church. They do so in order to deflect the application of Belgic Confession article 28 that it is the duty of all believers to join the true church wheresoever God has established it. “You think that you are the only ones saved.” “You think that in order to be saved, you must be a member of the Reformed Protestant Churches.” “You think that one cannot get to paradise except by way of the Reformed Protestant Churches or First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan.” It is a wicked slander that is intended to avoid applying the doctrine of article 28.

God calls the church out of darkness and into his marvelous light. He gathers his people by his word and Spirit. He forms them into true churches that are visible in the earth and are complete manifestations of the body of Christ in each place. The church agrees in true faith. Her members have the same judgment concerning spiritual matters. That is what sovereign, particular, efficacious grace accomplishes. God not only joins his people to Jesus Christ and gives to them every saving benefit, but God also gives to his people one mind, one will, and one mouth to speak the one truth that has been spoken since the beginning. In that sense the church is apostolic—she is founded on the doctrine of the apostles. The one voice of the church is heard off the pulpit, in the catechism room, by the officebearers in their work, in the Christian school, and among believers in their homes. The church speaks nothing less than the truth of the whole counsel of God found in the sacred scriptures. The church today speaks what the church spoke one hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, two thousand years ago, and six thousand years ago. The church speaks the truth of the sacred scriptures and the Reformed confessions. The word confession in scripture means to say together with. The church, being led into all truth by the Spirit, has confessions. “I believe, therefore I speak,” said the psalmist. The church systematizes the truth and brings that truth to a higher state of development. She takes hold of and lays out the doctrine of God’s word. And the church defends her confessions with her life, as they do fully agree with the word of God.

Having this one faith, the church desires and seeks unity with other true churches. This unity is not created but manifested. That is important. If the view is that the church creates unity, then she is left constantly having to compromise on the truth in order to create unity. But if the church maintains the view that this unity already exists by grace, because of her union with Christ and the one faith of the scriptures, then the church desires to manifest that unity where God reveals it.³ That the church desires to manifest the oneness of the faith takes form in denominations and sister-church relationships. It is the desire of the Reformed Protestant Churches and the desire of First Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan to manifest that oneness of the church in a sister-church relationship. Although the church often appears very small in the world—as she did in the world before the flood, during the persecution of Ahab, and as she will during the coming persecution before the return of Jesus Christ—the church is mighty in number if you consider her from the viewpoint of faith and the great cloud of witnesses that has gone before her.

The name church indicates where there is communion of the saints. Members have been called out of the world and called into fellowship and communion with God in Christ. The communion in the church is in Christ alone. There are no communion and fellowship with the world. There is communion among the brethren who believe in Christ by faith. The church and members of the church are the family of believers. Your family is not those who have not been called out of the false church and remain outside the true church. But your family is those who are called by God into the true church. The implication is that we serve one another with our gifts. God brought us into a body in order that we serve one another in the body with all our gifts and abilities. That is the Christian school. The Christian school is the living reality that the church stands antithetically over against the world. We band together to raise our children in the fear of God’s name and to teach them all things from the view of Reformed doctrine.

Not Church but “Sect”

The church of all ages serves the same God, has the same faith and same high calling, the same purpose and goal, fights the same fight with the same weapons, and speaks the same message of the gospel. There was no unity within First Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan, now called First Reformed Church of Bulacan (FRCB). The Belgic Confession gives a searing condemnation of this church. Article 29 states that she takes to herself the “name of Church,” but the article denies that she is church at all.⁴ The beginning of article 29 does not use the adjective false before the word “Church.” The Belgic Confession will use that adjective later in article 29 but not here. Here it says that the false church is not only false, but she is also not church. A church is one that is separated out of the world and unto God. That which is not separated unto God is not church but “sect.” The world labels First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan and the Reformed Protestant Churches as sects. The world says that as churches they are schismatic and that they have arrogant, radical, insane, mentally deranged men whom the members blindly follow. But in reality all those who call themselves church, yet who have departed from Christ, are not church but actually are sects, a charge they so flippantly assign to the Reformed Protestant Churches and First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan. Rev. John Flores and his church are not church but are what the Confession calls “sect,” which assumes to itself the name of church.

Reverend Flores and FRCB slander First Orthodox Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan by calling her a sect with the purpose to sow doubt among the congregation and bolster FRCB’s membership rolls. They are beating a drum about FORPCB’s officebearers, that they are not officebearers, and about FORPCB, that she is not a church. This officebearer did that wrong. This one did that wrong. Reverend Flores and FRCB try to find ground for their assertions in Church Order articles 22, 24, and 38, which they grossly misapply, as none of the articles have anything to say about church reformation when an institute has departed. The Church Order is a tool for the truth’s sake, but often it is used as a cudgel against the truth. The main principle of the Church Order is that one has membership in a true church. There can be no Church Order in that which calls itself church but is not church at all. The sect that left my congregation loves to champion the Church Order, but those who left deny the fundamental and underlying principle of the Church Order—church membership in a true church!

What Reverend Flores really rejects is the office of all believers. The believer is anointed with the Spirit of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. The special offices arise out of the office of believer. To apply that, I do not care if Elder Baguhin was not an elder. I do not care if Deacon Matt was not a deacon. I do not care if Reverend Pascual was not a minister. You should not care either. You did not need officebearers in order to carry out the reformation in the Philippines. Yes, there must be qualified men to serve in the special offices for a church to organize, but if there had not been one single elected officebearer to lead you out, it would not matter in determining whether you now are called a church. The glory of the office of all believers is that that office itself could form the church anew if the church departs. If every officebearer in FRCB was corrupt and there were none to lead you out, an election could have been held that same night after your Act of Separation was signed, and all three men could have been elected right then and there. It was the grace of God that he gave you men to serve in those special offices and to lead you out, but strictly speaking it was not necessary and not determinative of whether you are a church or not. You are a church because there are qualified men who have been chosen and equipped by God himself. God himself is working through those men in his church. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). The two qualifications of a church are that believers are gathered in God’s name and that there are at least two officebearers.

FRCB is not Reformed and therefore not even scriptural. The classis of the Reformed Protestant Churches took a decision in September 2022 that they “suspend pursuing a sister church relationship with First Reformed Protestant Church of Bulacan” on the ground that FRCB “disparaged the Reformed confessions.”⁵ Quoted also was an excerpt from Reverend Flores’ sermon on Lord’s Day 21:

And you must not forget this: When the Apostles’s [sic] Creed was made, there was no Reformed yet. There was no Calvinism yet. There were no confessions of faith like the Three of Unity! Don’t place forcefully something which is timely but that is not the intention of the Apostles’ Creed!

And again, a statement made by the council of FRCB: “Article 28 of the Belgic Confession of Faith will not stand the test of historic faith.” Also included was the following: “In the meeting of June 28, 2022 between the committee and members of the consistory of FRPCB, an elder in FRPCB made several statements to the effect that the churches need to get away from the confessions and get back to Sola Scriptura.” This decision was significant and monumental. The Reformed Protestant Churches said that FRCB was not one with them in the confessions of the church, and neither were the Reformed Protestant Churches and FRCB one in the Reformed faith and the word of God. 

FRCB’s doctrine of the church explains why FRCB thought it was entirely proper to baptize the baby of parents who were not members. FRCB broke down the Reformed faith to the lowest common denominator of Christianity, the Apostles’ Creed, and then on that basis baptized the baby because although the parents were not members, the council had judged them as believers. That baptism really revealed FRCB’s hatred of the Reformed confessions and especially of Reformed ecclesiology. Reverend Flores and company had pitched the truth out, and Elder Mescallado was the one who let the cat out of the bag. The Protestant Reformed Churches are doing the same thing today, voiced by Reverend Spronk in a letter of correspondence in Sword and Shield to which the undersigned has responded.⁶ Previous members of my congregation now also say the same, that everyone who says “I believe in Jesus Christ” is a believer, no matter their church membership or lack thereof.

Those who say that anyone who boasts of Jesus with their words is a believer deny the antithetical existence of the church. The believer’s church membership is an antithetical confession that here Jesus Christ speaks and over there he does not. Here is salvation because Christ is present. Out of the church there is no salvation. Here God uses the means of grace to feed and nourish his people unto everlasting life. Out there is no Christ and no Spirit working. Here we confess the doctrine of the scriptures and the Reformed confessions. There they do not confess the truth but take away from and add to the scriptures where they see fit. And to them God will add the curses written in that book and take away their part out of the book of life (Rev. 22:18–19).

Life flows out of doctrine, and flowing out of the wretched doctrine of Reverend Flores and FRCB is all manner of sin and wicked way of life. Reverend Flores and his church are carnal. If members of his church are listening to this speech and have concerns, I want them to listen carefully. In the course of a year and a half, Reverend Flores and his church received around ten million Philippine pesos from the Reformed Protestant Churches. I do not know if that number has ever been said before. I was on the committee that worked with Reverend Flores and his church. We never talked about doctrine with them. The conversation was always about money, whether at the council level or diaconate level. And it was never ending. Toward the end there seemed to be a new crisis every other week that demanded immediate attention. There were new crises regarding Flores’ son’s health, missions, cars, and debts. FRCB was like a black hole that sucked time and resources from the Reformed Protestant Churches. A black hole is a collapsed star that shines brightly toward the end of its life and then collapses on itself. It then sucks all the light and energy from nearby stars. Money went in to FRCB, and we never knew where it went or how it was being spent. The black hole always needed more. It was never satisfied. The Reformed Protestant Churches saw that they were being used and stopped the funds, and that was right around the same time that FORPCB split off from FRCB. Through the Reformed Witness Committee of the Reformed Protestant Churches, there have been more doctrinal discussions with FORPCB in a month than we ever had with Reverend Flores and his church.

Reverend Flores visited the first Reformed Protestant Churches Family Conference in August 2022. I do not know how he thought the visit went. Perhaps he thought it was very successful. I, along with anyone else who was there, can tell you that his visit was a miserable failure. One morning he led the devotions. Afterward there was an opportunity to ask questions. In an attempt to get to what should have been the heart of Flores’ visit, a member of the audience asked a simple question to the effect of “What did you hear or read in Protestant Reformed preaching or writing that caused you to understand there was false doctrine?” Flores stood there, fumbling around for words. Another audience member restated the question. Flores’ answer was that he had to consult his notes, and he did not have them with him. The young people in the audience could have answered that meatball question! But Flores had nothing to say! No rousing defense of the Reformed faith. Instead, we later got a pathetic plea about how the people in the Philippines go to bed hungry while in America we go to bed with full bellies and fluffy pillows. Translated, keep giving us money because people are starving. Maybe this would have passed as a good missions update in the Protestant Reformed Churches, but the whole audience at the family conference saw right through it. A month earlier financial support had ended for the Philippines, and there were some people who had questions about whether that was right or not, but by the end of the conference, no one questioned the fact that Reverend Flores and his group were not one with us in doctrine and that the support should have ended much sooner than it actually did.

Glorifying God Alone

The church’s antithetical purpose is the glory of God. The apostle Peter says, “That ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The church was eternally determined by God for that purpose. She is called and gathered by God for that purpose. Her salvation itself is for that purpose. She exists in the world to glorify, praise, honor, and serve the living God. And eternally in the glory of the new creation, that will remain the purpose of the church. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. 11:36).

The church glorifies God by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified. Jesus Christ is eternally with the Father and by whom and for whom all things are made. Jesus Christ is the eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity, the only-begotten Son of God. Jesus Christ is Jehovah come down in our flesh to save us poor sinners from our sins, who was conceived by a wonder of grace in the womb of the virgin Mary; suffered his whole life long; and was crucified on the accursed tree of Calvary to make satisfaction, to atone for our sins, to pay our ransom price to God, and to redeem us. Christ is the one who went into the grave in his body, upheld every moment by the divine God, and rose again from the dead. God sealed Christ’s redemptive work, so that in him we are justified and declared righteous. Christ ascended into heaven, poured out the Spirit he received, sits at God’s right hand, and will soon come again to judge the quick and the dead and to make all things new. That preaching alone gives God all the glory and honor.

And man? His name must be made nothing. Man thinks himself to be glorious. He thinks himself to be something. Man’s purpose is his own glory. Man sees himself as his own god and serves himself. But man is a sinner. And he brings the root sin of Adam to its grossest expressions. On man lays the blame and responsibility for sin. The wages of his sin is death. Man is a dead, ungodly, guilty sinner who is sold under sin. Man casts himself far from God. Man hates God, and man hates the neighbor. Man pushes God away from himself and holds the truth down in unrighteousness. Man serves Satan and sin and fulfills all the lusts of his flesh. Man had no part in the incarnation of Christ. Neither did man have any part in salvation. He had no part in the cross, except to condemn, excommunicate, and crucify the Lord from glory. Man has no salvation and no hope apart from Jesus Christ.

The church proclaims that glory be to God alone and to man be no glory at all. She preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ and so shines forth her light in the world of darkness as a beacon of hope to the dispersed, those yet to be gathered, and as comfort to believers assembled on the Sabbath. She preaches Christ crucified, which is drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry. The church proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life. This is the way, beloved! Believe in him. Do nothing. Believe, rest, trust, rely upon him alone!

When the church shows forth God’s praises, understand that God is carrying out warfare in the earth. The church on earth is called the church militant. She is the church at war for the sole reason that the world is in darkness and praises itself and the church exists to praise God. The antithetical position that the church assumes toward the world, including the false church, is one of warfare. In Ephesians 6 God calls the church to put on the whole armor of God. Lord’s Day 52 is fundamentally the prayer of the believer that God grant us his grace and Holy Spirit in this spiritual battle. The believer does not fight with weapons of flesh but with a weapon more powerful than any two-edged sword. It is a weapon—the only weapon—that cuts, divides, and pierces through the thoughts, intents, desires, and purposes of men. Not your country’s bombs, tanks, and planes but the word that comes off the pulpit of your church through the mouth of the man God gave to you is the most powerful weapon. Jesus Christ himself uses mere human instruments yet today to speak powerfully in his church. The world hates that weapon. The false church does everything she can to avoid the power of that weapon. Reverend Flores is actively disparaging that weapon by calling for a debate and moving the battleground away from the pulpit.

The church is for peace, but when she speaks, the world is for war (Ps. 120:7). Persecution is the lot of the church in the world as she is in the minority as far as numbers in the earth. The church as she is persecuted fills up the sufferings of Jesus Christ that he left behind. God’s cup of iniquity is filled by every word and action of Reverend Flores and his cronies against FORPCB. There is no need to vindicate yourself. God will vindicate himself in the day of judgment. It will be a judgment according to works. God will bring up those works, whether good or evil. You are not going to bring them up in that day, but God will. All the idle words and evil deeds of men will be brought forth, and your cause will be shown to have been the cause of the Son of God. And you have a judge who is also your savior. A savior in whom you are righteous before God. That day ought not to terrify you, but by faith you look forward to that day. It will be an awesome day of the Lord.

I want to end with a word of comfort to the saints in FORPCB.

11. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. (Matt. 5:11–12)

Blessed are you when men persecute you. It is a privilege to be counted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. We do not often think like that. We often think that it is the worst thing in the world. But when you are persecuted, you do not have a victim mentality, but you count it as a privilege, and you “rejoice!” as the apostle says. How antithetical to the carnal, worldly man who does all he can to avoid the harming of his name and reputation and who cries and weeps for himself when he suffers loss.

Men speak all manner of evil against you falsely. But the fact that you are persecuted is comforting. Men can say what they want. I read what they write. It is wicked, and God will judge them for it. He already is judging them with thieves, robbers, and hirelings, who pass for Reformed men. Blessed are ye, beloved! When the reward is mentioned in scripture, it is in connection with persecution and suffering. There is a reward of grace. The reward is God himself and eternal life.

Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren that are with me in First Reformed Protestant Church salute you. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Thank you for your time. Let us close in prayer.

Our God and gracious Father, we thank thee that we might dwell for a moment together on the doctrine of the church and her antithetical existence in the world. We thank thee that thou hast called us out of darkness, the darkness of our sins and the lie. We thank thee that thou hast called us into saving communion with thee through thy Son, Jesus Christ. Wilt thou speak through thy church the gracious gospel and good news of the Lord Jesus Christ crucified, gather those whom thou must yet call into this congregation, and use that gospel to comfort and preserve us unto life eternal, where we shall see thee face to face in thy beloved Son and dwell with thee forevermore. Uphold the congregation in the Philippines. We give thee thanks for their powerful witness to the truth. Wilt thou cast down all the counsels of the ungodly that are devised against thy anointed one and thy church to silence this antithetical witness. Forgive us of our sins. Lord, be merciful to us poor sinners. Send unto us the Spirit of our Lord to dwell in us and comfort us as we walk our pilgrims’ way. Empty us of ourselves and fill us with Jesus Christ. Hear our prayer for his sake alone. Amen.