Blog on the Lillypad
Monday, August 25, 2003
I tried to push myself through Tom Neal's Baptist Contender online but couldn't get all the way through. If you go there, be prepared to be sick (those of you who are not IFB fundamentalists). It gives about 50-50 reference to God and Jack Hyles; but the Person of God is a god cast into the image of the IFB god (who looks a lot like Jack Hyles), and is not the biblical representation of God.
Needless to say, there was nothing of Christ's work presented at all in what I read. It was a sort of whipping the reader into agreement, a lot of fallacious reasoning to indict Jack Schaap (who can be indicted on plenty of valid reasons, but Neal relies on typical IFB thinking that strains at minor things and misconstrues and misrepresents). What struck me most strongly was his constant referencing of Jack Hyles as an authority for all matters of conduct and theology. Well, I guess this is normal, coming from the man who sheltered the incredibly perverted and adulterous Dave Hyles until Dave left for Texas a few weeks ago.
In spite of the acrimonious rivalry, I consider Schaap and Neal to be two peas in the same pod---members of a dying but incredibly corrupt and grasping religious movement that relies on exterior conformity and performance of certain specified tasks to attain a level of personal righteousness that they believe impresses God and gives them power and authority. It is so convoluted, so self referential, and so much like madness to outsiders that we can hope (and pray) that it soon falls. The nearness of financial catastrophe to Tom Neal's church is a hopeful sign. I am hoping for a domino effect, and I hope to live to see the movement collapes on its own financial indiscretions.
Needless to say, there was nothing of Christ's work presented at all in what I read. It was a sort of whipping the reader into agreement, a lot of fallacious reasoning to indict Jack Schaap (who can be indicted on plenty of valid reasons, but Neal relies on typical IFB thinking that strains at minor things and misconstrues and misrepresents). What struck me most strongly was his constant referencing of Jack Hyles as an authority for all matters of conduct and theology. Well, I guess this is normal, coming from the man who sheltered the incredibly perverted and adulterous Dave Hyles until Dave left for Texas a few weeks ago.
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It amounts to a tempest in a tea pot. I mean, I'm sure that Jack Schaap is seriously inconvenienced by it, but on reading the rag, the strongest thing that hits me is that these people are so insular. As the name of God serves merely as a rubber stamp that they affix to their pet theories and petty rivalries, the reader has to find their real points of reference. And these points of reference are names that are rapidly being forgotten----Jack Hyles, Lester Roloff, RG Lee, John R. Rice. The public, even the ardent churchgoing public, is ever declining in its ability to recall who these men were. This, of course, is as it should be. Each of us must be forgotten so that the true reality of the work of God is made more clear. And whoever holds to a memory of a man holds to that which must decline and dwindle. It's like clutching very fine sand. |
In spite of the acrimonious rivalry, I consider Schaap and Neal to be two peas in the same pod---members of a dying but incredibly corrupt and grasping religious movement that relies on exterior conformity and performance of certain specified tasks to attain a level of personal righteousness that they believe impresses God and gives them power and authority. It is so convoluted, so self referential, and so much like madness to outsiders that we can hope (and pray) that it soon falls. The nearness of financial catastrophe to Tom Neal's church is a hopeful sign. I am hoping for a domino effect, and I hope to live to see the movement collapes on its own financial indiscretions.
