It’s also rumored that he eats children…uncooked!
UPDATE: I can’t comment on the YouTube site where the learned Red Beetle posted his penetrating expose but I did see this comment from “ReformedLou.”
I haven’t yet read the thread, but this accusation is troubling, especially since so much good work against the federal vision error is accomplished by God through Clark and others at WSC. I was brought by God to faith from without the congregation, and though I’ve been sinfully disobedient in attendance over the last 2 years (pray for me), I don’t doubt my justification before attending church in physical congregation, nor God’s working my salvation now, despite my wretched disobedience.
This post is exactly why I wrote the original series, “Are Church Members Free Agents?”.
RL’s post illustrates some massive problems with the way “Christians” live on the web and relate to the church. First, he’s commenting on a discussion he hasn’t read. This is bizarre. How can that be? Second, he’s actually tempted to credit some anonymous cat who calls himself “Red Beetle” and who is a member of some ethereal internet “church” and accountable to none! Third, RL confesses to being churchless yet comforts himself with the fact that he is justified nevertheless.
Just so we’re clear here folks, this is the stuff that helped to give gave rise to the FV. This is why folks are tempted to deny the “internal/external” distinction or the distinction between the visible and visible aspects of the church. Imagine if RL had written, “I haven’t stopped beating my wife. I feel guilty about it, but I keep doing it and I’m sure that I’m justified before Christ.”
Really? How does that work? Of course no one is justified by sanctification and we all sin and beating one’s wife is a civil crime worthy, in my opinion, the severest civil punishment. The point is that we would never accept the testimony of someone impenitently committing some other gross sin such as idolatry, adultery, theft, murder and the like that he is to be regarded as a Christian. We would say, “I’m sorry. No sinner is justified by being good but anyone who claims to be a Christian cannot be committing gross sin impenitently.” Certainly we have grounds for doubting such a claim to faith.
On what grounds? Does James 2 ring a bell? James doesn’t say that anyone is justified by law-keeping or even by grace and coopration with grace but the point of the passage is to challenge the easy claim made by the Jerusalem congregation that “I am a Christian” despite all the evidence to the contrary. They said they were Christians but they gave no evidence.
This evidence is not the ground of assurance or faith nor is it in any way the ground or instrument of justification but it is nevertheless morally and logically necessary for those who claim to be Christians.
The Belgic Confession Art 28 (quoted twice below in the comments) says very explicitly that God’s salvation is administered in the visible, covenant community. Those who willfully absent themselves from the visible church (as defined by the marks of a true church) should have no confidence that they are in a state of grace.
Repentance is not “feeling bad” about something. Repentance is turning away from sin and it is a fruit of faith. RL I have a message for you: Repent. You say that you know that you should be in a true church. Well, do it! I realize that there are ambiguities and difficulties. Sometimes it’s not easy to find a true church. I realize that people have been hurt in congregations and, as a consequence, they wander between congregations for a time. I’ve known some to leave the visible church altogether and sometimes with apparently good reason.
Ultimately, however, whatever you have suffered in a congregation there is still no ground for refusing to unite with a congregation that has the marks of a true church. To congregations I say: manifest the marks! We cannot insist that people attend if we refuse to manifest the marks. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot treat the church as if it were a private club AND demand that Christians attend and submit to its ministry and discipline. That’s cheating.
UPDATE 14 Apr. Lou and I had good discussion in the combox below in which he was able to give a little context to his comments on YouTube.
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April 10, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Daniel Kok
I knew it all along!
April 10, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Wes Bredenhof
Shocking!
But hey, so is the Belgic Confession:
“We believe, since this holy assembly and congregation is the assembly of the redeemed and there is no salvation outside of it, that no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself, no matter what his state or quality might be.” (Article 2
April 10, 2008 at 7:12 pm
chaos
all advertisement is good advertisement. now monty’s minions will be exposed to the gospel.
April 10, 2008 at 8:13 pm
R. Scott Clark
Ding, ding, ding!
Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!
April 10, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Josh
Mmm….uncooked chirrens. Yum yum.
April 10, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Randy Snyder
It’s also rumored that he eats children…uncooked!
ROFL
April 11, 2008 at 5:09 am
Josiah
This video cant be real can it?! I dont know what you and Monty talked about, but simply by listening to this I can tell that you (RSC) are being taken out of context.
April 11, 2008 at 5:11 am
Howard
You know, sometimes people ought to pay a little more attention to what is being said instead of what they think is being said.
I am sorry that your name is being dragged through the mud over someone being over-zealous and under-careful. The guy actually told people to read the discussion. If you read the discussion, it actually helps to clear you of the charges rather than support his claims.
April 11, 2008 at 5:27 am
Martin Downes
You know Scott I have had some suspicions about you for some time now. I mean “Scott” and “Socinus” share some letters…
April 11, 2008 at 7:29 am
rjs1
“Wrong end of stick” comes to my mind
April 11, 2008 at 7:56 am
Pat
He makes it sound like R. Scott Clark holds to a kind of Federal Vision theology! :-O I’m assuming some things were taken out of context or confused in some way. That’d be scary if R. Scott Clark actually held to a view that regeneration only comes after you join a church!
April 11, 2008 at 9:18 am
R. Scott Clark
Hi Pat,
Yes, the learned Red Beetle is either ignorantly or willfully (or both) misrepresenting what I said. You can read my views in the series: Are Church Members Free Agents? here on the HB. You can also see the discussion for yourself on the Puritanboard.
I’m only saying what the Belgic Confession says:
“We believe, since this holy assembly and congregation is the assembly of the redeemed and there is no salvation outside of it, that no one ought to withdraw from it, content to be by himself, no matter what his state or quality might be.” (Article 28).
This article does not say that one is regenerated because one joins a church. This article doesn’t say that the Spirit can only operate within the church but this article does teach that no one who willfully separates himself from the true visible church (where ever the marks of a true church are found) has any expectation of being saved.
If someone is willfully and impenitently sinning can they claim to be a Christian? If so, on what grounds do we exercise church discipline? What about Matt 18?
The question is: where has God promised to administer the grace of salvation? The answer, of course, is: in the visible, institutional church.
April 11, 2008 at 10:13 am
Daniel Ritchie
What a strange message. But if I am not mistaken that bloke Red Beetle has a habit of calling “all on sundry” heretics.
April 11, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Paul
Uh, breaker 1-9 this here’s the rubber duck, you got a copy on me Red Beetle c’mon?
April 11, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Paul
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got ourselves a heretic!
April 11, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Jack
I’m just curious, have you tried to at least get a comment to RL? I think he was fair to you despite admitting to not reading the thread. Should he have read first? Absolutely. RL did not take the Beetle appraoch and did express a sense of caution.
I think it odd however, you would make the extreme “imagine” wife beater contrast and also make the claim, “I have a message for you: repent”, if you are not willing to try and contact RL with that message.
The Beetle fella is a teaching elder at a Tennessee Reformed church. Not sure which one. I remember hearing that in one of his vid’s. From what I have gathered in the few vid’s I’ve watched, Beetle is more hyper in his Calvinism. The Beetle has great zeal for Gordon H. Clark and John W. Robbins. I respect both of those men, but find them short of the end-all on any subject.
I do appreciate your work Scott. Very much so. This is not meant as an attack. I hope you understand that. I just wanted to add my internet two cents.
April 11, 2008 at 9:05 pm
R. Scott Clark
Hi Jack,
I’m not sure that this “Reformed Church” actually exists in TN. I suspect it may be an internet phenomenon.
Yes, I think that the learned Beetle is a devotee of G. H. Clark and John Robbins.
I can’t comment at the Learned Beetle’s site and I don’t know how to contact RL. Yes, he was a little more gentle than the learned Beetle, but how could someone comment on things one has not read?
I used the analogy of the wife beater because, presumably, we all agree that is sin. If willfully absenting oneself from the visible church also sin, then isn’t the remedy for both of these sins the same? Isn’t it to repent?
How do I tell RL to repent except to say, “repent?”
April 12, 2008 at 12:32 am
Stephen
Prof. Clark, would you please explain the “stuff” that helped give rise to the FV? I am not proFV (sounds like shampoo), just want to understand your statement.
April 12, 2008 at 6:40 am
Danny Hyde
Jack,
I want to use your words, “The Beetle fella is a teaching elder at a Tennessee Reformed church. Not sure which one,” as a jumping off point.
After Monty Collier posted on the PuritanBoard I saw the name of his church, “Geneva Dutch Calvinist Church” and thought to myself, “That was an interesting name,” so I went online to find out more info. IT DOESN’T EXIST. There is no phone number, no address, no contact info, no website, no Yellow Pages listing, nothing, nada, nil. All I could find were his YouTube “lectures,” a site that was devoted to exposing him, and pictures of him half-naked on the floor with another man wrestling.
To give you a sense of his intellectual abilities, the site devoted to exposing him made a big deal that Christians should not be involved in Mixed Martial Arts fighting. So, the Rev. Dr. Beetle posted a video “proving” that wrestling is biblical. His proof: Jacob wrestled with God, but here’s the kicker, even the NT talks about wrestling. He quotes from Eph. 6, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A verse that says “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” is proof that wrestling is biblical and legitimate for Christians to engage in?
Anyways, the moderators on the PuritanBoard e-mailed him and asked for proof that he was a “teaching elder” and he offered none, I was told, so that banned him from the list.
I think this Beetle is of the dung kind.
April 12, 2008 at 8:19 am
R. Scott Clark
Hi Stephen,
By “stuff” I mean to say, “this sort of radical individualist, egalitarian, high-handed, approach to the visible, institutional church, to which Christ gave the keys of the kingdom in Matt 16 and in which he instituted church discipline in Matt 18.”
By “stuff” I mean the idea that one can regard himself as a Christian when he is knowingly and willfully and impentitently continuing in blatant disregard for the law of God.
Of course we all sin and of course we continue to struggle with the same sins all our lives. We aren’t triumphalists or Methodists or perfectionists or Nazarenes or the like. There is a difference, however, between struggling with sin and not struggling with sin. There is a difference between struggling with sin in the context of a congregation and not struggling with sin outside of a congregation!
If someone says, “I have a hole in my head and I’m bleeding but I just can’t bring myself to go to the hospital” I think to myself, “Either this person doesn’t really have a hole in his head or he has a metaphorical hole in his head.” In either case the incongruity of claiming to have a hole in the head and not going to the hospital is too much to over come.
For more on the FV see this page of resources.
April 12, 2008 at 9:58 am
Jack
Mr. Scott,
I hear you, honestly. While we both would concede sin to be sin (break one, may as well have broken them all) and the only answer to be repentance, for me, I found the balance of the contrast unbalanced. I viewed it as more antagonistic than a healthy addition towards a “weaker brother”. I do see your point as valid. It was just the approach. I don’t want to make too much of it, so I’ll leave it here, as the minor it is.
The “Free Agents” threads have challenged me on the issue in ways I had not taken some of my conclusions before. The unraveling here only serves to affirm my convictions on abiding with the 99 at the base of the vine where Christ our Lord has placed His keys.
Mr. Hyde,
Thank you for that information. I reckon this thread will be useful for others when Collier’s name is googled henceforth. I had dug into this as well, like you, I could find no information on the “GDC” last night. I did find Collier on the Trinity Foundation page as a signer for the “The Reformation Day Declaration, 2004″:
Monty L. Collier
Jiu-jitsu instructor
kingsport
TN
Monty is listed as an Ithaca Judo instructor elsewhere. It appears teaching/instructing is a desired passion of his. This accumulation against one who wants to represent the Reformed faith, is far removed from acceptable.
That wrestling fiasco was an embarrassment. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” Those were probably my exact words when I seen the vid. Thomas Richards is a heretic on an extreme level and answers as Monty gave only increase a heretics audience.
The Lord keep you both.
Jude 1:24-25
April 12, 2008 at 1:07 pm
enu
the internet is a weiiiird place.
April 12, 2008 at 10:26 pm
ReformedLou
Hi Dr. Clark,
First I want to thank you for editing “Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry”. I pre-ordered it and found it a wonderful treatment. I owe much to you and WSC.
Secondly, though YouTube communication is difficult to decipher, it should be plain that I wasn’t remarking upon your conversation, not having read it, but found the “accusation troubling”, which I did. I didn’t verify Monty’s (of whom I am not a minion) claims. Having listened to the rest of the video, which gave a positive presentation of his doctrine (riddled with insinutation, yes), I brought to bear my personal experience on the issue, as far as he had opened it. All this to say, I was commenting on the issue of salvation within/without the local congregation, without refuting you, whom I hadn’t heard. It’s the abbreviated verbiage world of YouTube, for better or worse.
So let me thirdly address what you may consider a “casual, abbreviated” view of church attendance. When I said that I have been “disobedient in attendance”, it doesn’t mean that I’m not trying to find a church home within my denomination, or that I haven’t attended church at all. I spoke with an ex-elder, who told me the elders would vouch for me at a new church. The country club (your apt term) is all I found, moneyed, cliquish; one even decided to address my bowing the head at benediction as wrong practice, though he didn’t name me specifically. Matters of indifference taught dogmatically, as I see it. He never even spoke to me, by the way. I mean never. I have found a non-denom. Calvinist church, which I will be attending, which is rather far away, but seems to love the brethren, in addition to holding right fundamental doctrines. I appreciate the prodding I’ve been given, by God, through this unfortunately ill-mannered interchange. Can you really draw a parallel to my statement on the video and professing I’m a Christian “with all evidence to the contrary”?
I still don’t doubt my justification, or the work of salvation my Lord works in me. Before Him, and by Him, I stand. Thank you Jack, for your kind words to a weaker brother.
I will continue to support WHI, and purchase WSCal publications, and laud good work as it’s done. But theological “two-one’s” (leading in with the finishing blow) don’t help you, Dr. Clark, any more than they help Monty, or any of us who listen to it. Sorry for the long and messy post.
April 13, 2008 at 7:27 am
R. Scott Clark
Hi Lou,
It’s good to hear from you. I agree that internet communication is fragmentary at best.
It’s true that I don’t know all the details and I appreciate you filling in the picture. I apologize for jumping to conclusions. I read your words in the light of the many conversations I’ve had with those who have claimed to be Christians and members of the “invisible” church even though they do not attend any congregation anywhere. It seems to be almost universally assumed in North America that church membership is optional and a sort of second blessing: nice but not necessary.
I’m sorry that you’ve had challenges in your present congregation. If, however, it confesses the Reformed faith (i.e. the Westminster Standards or the Three Forms of Unity) then I would encourage you to remain connected to it. If the issues are grievous then you should take them up with the session/consistory. If you do not get satisfaction then you should follow the Book of Church Order and take your case to presbytery.
Certainly before one leaves a confessional Reformed congregation for a non-confessional congregation (as defined above) one should seek reform.
Obviously I don’t know the particulars of your case but I hope generally that folk will not walk away from even nominally confessional congregations without attempting reform according to God’s Word as confessed by the churches. If we just walk away then the churches that need reform (which is all of us at some level) will never be called back to adherence to the Word. Speaking generally, we should not leave even a nominally Reformed congregation without the most grave reasons.
Thanks again for writing. I hope you’ll be able to sit down with the elder who offended you and that you will able to reconcile. If there are Corinthian-like divisions then the session should be challenged to address those things. The kingdom of God is not a matter of clothing and money but of grace, peace, and the love of Christ.
Sabbath blessings.
April 13, 2008 at 10:58 am
ReformedLou
Well, your response is a breath of fresh air on this Sabbath day! I am relatively new to the faith (Christian from Atheist), and from what I’ve seen since I believed, I needed that display of love. May God richly bless you, Dr. Clark, and Monty, and all readers on this Sabbath day.
April 14, 2008 at 8:25 am
Monty L. Collier (Red Beetle)
R. Scott Clark is a sacerdotalist, not a Calvinist. His theology is no better than Federal Vision: it’s just another road back to Rome.
Here is the official write up:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&ping=1
—
Clark the heretic here: by posting this I am not endorsing the doctrine of the learned Beetle. Indeed, I had to rescue this post from my spam folder! Perhaps the software is wiser than I.
April 15, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Darren
I always thought there was something fishy with that Clark guy — the way he always seems to call on those Papist documents like the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.
Red Beetle… sounds like a superhero moniker. Reminds me of a comic book character I used to read in high school called, “The Tick.” Any relationship?
April 18, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Nathan
Sadly I had a feeling about Red Bettle that he would in the near future create problems such as these.
May 15, 2008 at 6:41 am
John Brew
As someone who once left a church when a pastor wwas dismissed I would like to say I agree with Dr. Clark, and with Cyprian and Calvin We cannot have God as Father and now accept the Church as our mother. Individualists are not in a truely Reformed position. Christ died for his people.- the church. I am a Baptist in a non-reformed Baptist church, and having said that will probably be dismissed by some on both counts. However i love my church with all its faults. It is God’s church as was the one in Corinth (I Cor 1:1-9)
Thank you Dr. Clark for all your excellent materials.
May 15, 2008 at 7:10 am
John Brew
Correction What I wanted to say was “We cannot have God as Father and not accept the church as our mother