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OPEN LETTER TO REV. PROCEE (FREE REFORMED CHURCH, THE NRC CHURCHES AND REV. DE GROOT REFORMED CHURCH IN SPRINGFORD
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Burgessville, October 2011
Open letter (update) to Pastor Procee, and all ministers of the Free Reformed Church, all ministers of the NRC Church, including rev. De Groot of the 'Sardis'-congregation in Springford
It is with regret to inform you that we can no longer come to confession-of-faith class and to your church, because the biblical discipline is missing and the truth has been raped in your church. Besides, we are not looking for a social preaching, and we are not looking for ministers who are preaching contrary to Galatians 1:10.
After visiting the Oxford Preaching Station for over 6 months we have heard many sermons and we must tell you that the preaching is not according to God's Word. You and the preachers we have heard in your church deny the biblical doctrine of the Reformation, the justification of the ungodly and the doctrine of sanctification sounds terrible false too.
Your church-denomination, and also the Springford-church of Rev. De Groot, deny the law of God as the ministration of death and the fruit of that kind of false preaching is, that the old man under the law, who is still under the wrath of God, like the rich young man, are partakers of the Lord's Supper!
The doctrine of Christ is the only biblical way to salvation. God through Jesus Christ saves lost sinners by His Word and Spirit in a way of justice. "Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness", Isa 1:27.
The Bible teaches us that there is no one that seeks after God and not one asks for Him. Because by nature we are enemies of God and we have a heart of stone that is closed for God and his Word. This is contrary to the sermons we have heard in your church. Because you and other ministers preach that there are unconverted sinners that have an earnest longing and desire to love and seek the Lord and they want to live according to His law. They come with so-called faith and earnestly seek to live a new life while they are dead in sin! You preaches 2 Cor. 7:10 as the way to Christ, but 2 Cor. 7:10 talks about the grace in Christ. Gods people who has godly sorrow, has forgiveness of sin and a reconciled Father in heaven and they know that by true faith.
Hebrew 12:17 speaks about Esau who was also earnestly seeking and praying; but he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. If it is the sinner that is coming to Christ, the sinner that has a longing, the sinner that has a desire, the sinner that has faith, the sinner who is searching, the sinner that believes, what does Christ as the only Saviour then still have to do? It puts a blame on Christ, Who alone is the Saviour of LOST sinners, sinners that don't want to be converted, sinners that travel on their way to hell, sinners that have chosen their own condemnation, sinners that have left all their responsibility, sinners that only feel they are an enemy of God and their own salvation, dead in sin and misery!
The God-fearing Hannah says in 1 Samuel 2:6 "The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up." That kind of biblical conversion is and has been denied in your church, and also by the preaching of rev. De Groot (Springford). The divine truth is disappeared in this entire area, it is a valley of death, but almost nobody is concerned. The way you preach, a sinner will search for all spiritual good in himself while he never has to die to the law and from his own self righteousness.
We live in a day and age that sin is not sin anymore, even in the churches. In the early days there was a holy reverence towards the divine institutions of God's House especially to the Lord's Supper. Today we can live with a lot of outward sin that were condemnable (and still are) for God and all His people, young and old.
If a true Christian has to be separated from the world and should be judged by his daily life how can somebody from the world tell the difference if the women in your churches wear pants and have shaved heads and short hair? How can the world see a difference if so-called God-fearing people have television, wear make-up, wear leggings and are dressed like the world even in Gods House! If all this was condemnable when Jesus was still on earth, it still is!
You can call me the worse, but Gods Word tells us that if we do not even want to serve the Lord in the small things how can we serve Him inwardly with an upright heart? You have permitted a lot of world conformity in your churches. That looks like a proof that there is no living Church in your midst.
If Christ was still on earth He would call many of those so-called 'God fearing' people, hypocrites. If there is not even an outward difference between church-goers and worldly people let alone between God fearing people and the world, it is not a church of Christ anymore, or has God changed, or has His holy Word changed? How can we ever earn respect if we join the world and call ourselves Christians?
I don't say this because I feel myself better, and don't blame me for this, but God's Word proclaims that His people hate sin and that even though they can fall in it, they cannot LIVE in it. And that does not only apply to Sundays but every day of the week. It's not my intention to pretend that there is a perfect church, but if we don't even want to live according to His Word outwardly, what then? I am not pleading for an outward religion, but antinomianism is cursed by God Himself. The partakers of the Lord's table in your church live in public sin and you have done nothing about it, not even by your preaching.
Also we were shocked to hear that there was a preacher (rev. D.J. Budding) from the false PKN church preaching among you (this also took place in the Springford reformed Church, because the Springford-consistory recently invited PKN-rev. C. VandenBerg, who turned back from China as a tourist). This was one of the reasons we had left the Springford Reformed Church, but that congregation is enough warned by letters of my dad (GPPB.) in the past, but that church it is still filled with bans and under the curse of the Lord, like it is written in Josua 7:12: "Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you."
How can you allow ministers from the false PKN-church to preach among you, while God forbids us to do this? A church denomination which allows gay couples to get married, women to be in the ministry and having ties with ROME, a church which have signed the Joint Declaration of Justification with Rome and the Lutheran World Federation!! The Bible calls this a church of the antichrist, no matter who preaches there! God forbids us to be a member of a false church with such a rotten foundation (Rev. 18:4).
But nowadays we pretend to know far better than God and are so high minded that we think that God's Word is to much against false doctrines! We pretend to be more merciful than God and therefore accept preachers from such a false church! But be aware, you and your ministers are infected with the same false doctrine.
I have said what I wanted to say, but we all have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. If we are not saved by the blood of Jesus Christ we will perish forever. I am sure you will agree with that by an oral confession, but in your preaching we miss the personal application of God's saving grace applied to a hell-worthy sinner in the way of justice. God justifies the UNGODLY, but you are preaching the opposite.
The Bible teaches us that outside of Christ we only seek to escape our eternal punishment. It is Christ that seeks and also finds His people as a lost sheep. If the Shepherd would have never sought the lost sheep, the sheep with all its seeking, would have been lost forever! Conversion is not a fifty-fifty religion between God and men, but 100% God's sovereign work in Christ.
Christ speaks to lost sinners in the hell of their existence and forgives all their sins, peace to His people; He will speak and they will hear (John 5:25)!
I am not a preacher and I have not studied to write you a letter like this. But I have tried to explain and defense the truth of Gods Word which the Reformers have been fighting for.
We need to go back to the doctrine of Christ, to return to the doctrine of the Reformation, because that was an act of God to distinguish between the true biblical doctrine and false doctrines! But if you miss the experience of faith of that doctrine, you will continue to deny it and you will continue your preaching that we are already on the narrow way to heaven if we have but a longing and a desire, but it is a false doctrine and the fruit of this kind of doctrine will be a multitude of churches filled with foolish virgins who stand before a closed door in the day of judgement.
Pastor, I have to warn you, many of the people that you may think are on their way to heaven, are still traveling on the broad way! That is not my judgement, but the judgement of God revealed in His Word. And it is your calling and duty to distinguish and separate between God's true converted people and the hypocrites.
You also told us, that not all God's people know the Lord Jesus and the forgiveness of sin. This doctrine typically is the false doctrine of the separated churches and is contrary of the doctrine of Christ. ALL Gods people know Jesus Christ because He says about His sheep: "And when He putteth forth His Own sheep, He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him: for they know His voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers", John. 10:4-5. You also deny the divine truth of John 10:14: "I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine."
If you say that you can only judge a Christian by what he confesses and his daily life, then the Lord Jesus must be wrong, because you admit people to the Lord's Supper that are not even outward Christians, all women wear pants throughout the week, almost all women have short hair and a worldly life. The Lord Jesus condemns this kind of believers: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead", Revelation 3:1.
I felt it as a burden on my heart to write you all this, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad", 2 Cor. 5:10.
When visiting us, you confessed that you are a stranger of justification by the application of free grace, and I would advise you to start a coffee shop, or something like that, because Rev. George Whitefield once said, that unconverted ministers are a curse for the Church!
May the Lord open your eyes, or it will go in the way like God's Word says in John 9:40-41: "And some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these words, and said unto Him, Are we blind also? Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth."
Sincerely Yours,
R. B.
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