In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days.  Here are numbers 21-30.

In 2023 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 21-30:

Parents And the Apostasy of Covenant Children

Among what these principles teach is that when a parent loves his family first and foremost, he neither loves God nor his family aright. One loves his children above God by pursuing their happiness rather than their Godliness, their respectability rather than their need for righteousness in Christ. Even to seek equally both happiness and Godliness is to deny God. It is to deny the primacy of a biblical pursuit of God, and that all blessings beyond knowing Christ are incidental to seeking first the kingdom of God. It’s to pursue God’s favor apart from thirsting after Christ. What can be more subtly idolatrous for the Christian?

Blasphemy in the Presbyterian Church in America: A Reflection before the General Assembly

Does he believe sexual immorality is shameful (Eph. 5:12) and corrosive (1 Cor. 6:18) and ought not to be discussed, or does he believe that being a ‘[insert sin here] Christian’ is just another form of Christian experience? Does he believe that it is blasphemy to associate Christ’s holy name with enduring sin and to make that sin central to one’s identity, experience, personhood, or ‘authentic self,’ or does he think it is needless alarmism and decidedly unwinsome to object strenuously to such obviously worldly notions?

Big Eva Says Out with Complementarianism, In with Anti-Fundamentalism

Moore is a former Southern Baptist leader and Gospel Coalition council member who is now the editor of Christianity Today magazine. The mere fact that he’s now the editor there shows something is afoot, given that Moore was historically strongly complementarian and Christianity Today has long been egalitarian. As I noted in a previous post, Moore wrote a column in March of this year saying that evangelicals needed to rethink their gender wars. Though obviously in a Moore style rather than a Keller one, it is an almost perfect instantiation of Keller’s framework and strategy. 

Movie Review: Nefarious

There is so much to appreciate about this film, and not just because it’s a good movie. Nefarious is a theologically orthodox explanation about God, the Devil, and the cosmic battle which occurs every day for a person’s soul.

2023 Orthodox Presbyterian Church General Assembly Report – UPDATED

For the election of a new moderator the following were nominated: Rev. Bruce Prentice (Mandon, ND), Elder Bruce Stahl (Wentzville, MO) and Rev. John Shaw (general secretary of OPC Home Missions). After a vote Mr. Shaw was declared elected. Rev. Danny Olinger (general secretary of OPC Christian Education), who had nominated Mr. Shaw, led in prayer for the newly elected moderator.

Schools in the Presbyterian Church in America

With respect to membership, PCA churches with schools are significantly larger. The average PCA church has 230 members on its rolls on average. Churches with schools average 630 members, while those without average 190. They have both more communicant members (500 vs. 148) and non-communicant members (131 vs. 41).

The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

As fate—or perhaps providence—would have it, Darby’s premillennial eschatology and the stark intensity of his heaven-earth dualism caught on not just in Southern England, but in America. Reshaped in the hands of other ministers, theologians, and popularizers, his ideas and those of his Plymouth Brethren colleagues would in due time change the trajectory of American evangelicalism and the nation’s culture. The ideas presidents kicked around in the Oval Office can be traced back to his work.

Turning Worship into a Clown Show

Our God, our New Testament God, is a consuming fire and to be approached with awe and reverence, as the book of Hebrews teaches. And those incapable of acting in accordance with that have no place in the pastoral ministry. And the SBC is certainly not poorer for their departure.

Avoiding a Second Civil War

Two competing religions are struggling in a battle against each other for control of our nation’s numerous institutions such as the civil government, the military, education, and even the church. Whatever labels you use for the two sides of the conflict, either wokeism versus traditionalism, or Cultural Marxism versus Christianity, the clash between the two factions is heated and intense.  We call them culture wars, but we need to be reminded that culture is downstream from religion.

How To Kill A Denomination In One Easy Move

If you want to kill your denomination in one easy move that move is to neglect General Assembly.   Those who helped bring in the very things that caused you to send your ruling elders to GA in the first place (Revoice/Side-B, CRT, female line- authority, etc.) are themselves going to be at General Assembly and they are waiting to reengage at the very first indication that our denomination has again attained a false sense of security.
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We must maintain that we who repent and believe stand in robes of righteousness as beloved sons and daughters of God, even as we do daily battle with any and all sexual lust and unbiblical desire that claims our affections.  We are not our sin, and we ought never to let it define us.

Gay Christianity was born out of desperation. People like me—people who have had in the past or who currently have deep, abiding and/or long-lasting sexual desires for members of our own gender—had found no place in the broad evangelical church. Instead, these churches typically say homosexuality is a behavior to be modified through parachurch ex-gay ministries. The church condemned such feelings as bad choices and condemned the people (like me) who experienced these feelings as abominations, falsely calling homosexual desires a willful choice.
I have never met a person who has chosen same-sex attraction. In the early 2000s, people with abiding and lasting same-sex attraction gathered together under the umbrella term gay Christian. They are supported by the Gay Christian Network, or Side A (which sanctions same-sex marriage and believes that homosexuality is just one of many forms of diverse sexuality that the church should welcome), and the Spiritual Friendship internet community, or Side B (which believes that homosexuality is not a morally culpable issue, although it is a consequence of the brokenness from the Fall; Side B teaches against homosexual sexual practice, but only for the sake of Christian tradition). While Side B seeks to uphold biblical sexual standards, because it sees sexual orientation as an accurate category of personhood (i.e., there is such a thing as a gay person—that gayness describes who someone essentially is), their theology in no way allows for an understanding of why homosexuality, even at the level of desire, is sinful and needing the grace of repentance. To the Side B Christian, homosexuality is a sexuality—one of many.
Over the years, we have seen many Side B Christians defect for Side A, declaring that God sanctions gay unions. And I predict that we will see many more defectors, since the theology behind Side B is biblically untenable. How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate? Hating our own sin is a key component to doing battle with it. At the same time, we need to separate ourselves from the sin we hate.  This can be a very challenging issue for a Christian who experiences SSA, an issue that becomes exceedingly more challenging if one assumes the social identity of “gay Christian.”
We must maintain that we who repent and believe stand in robes of righteousness as beloved sons and daughters of God, even as we do daily battle with any and all sexual lust and unbiblical desire that claims our affections.  We are not our sin, and we ought never to let it define us.
Side A and Side B both support the idea that sexual orientation is an accurate category of personhood, and therefore they both are outside the bounds of biblical teaching.
Source

You also say that “strangers have attacked strangers behind the safe confines of computers, news agencies, and conferences,” which “proliferates fear and distrust,” and that “there will always be people who are all about power.” In all of this I remind you that you hide yourselves behind confines safer than the things you mention here, all of which are at least public, and that your organization has a clever scheme to use committee assignments and other machinery of the General Assembly and presbyteries to accomplish a desired agenda.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Argumentative Method and Use of Scripture
Your appeals are essentially emotional in nature and misuse Scripture, as seen in the following excerpts from “The Letter.” Perhaps you will say that this is no creature of yours, but it was written by one of your number, you discussed and commended it among yourselves, and it bears the signature of many of your foremost members who are known. He who signs a document attests his assent to the veracity thereof, and so the arguments of the Letter might be deemed your own, even if they are accepted by many others as well.
In the Letter you say that in the midst of our controversies “specific brothers in good standing have been labeled.” All offenses in the church are committed by people who are in good standing; if they were not in good standing they would not be in the church. You should not be zealous to use such an argument which was widely used by liberals in other denominations to deflect criticism. The, too, you seem to object, not so much to the particular labels used, but to the mere fact that polemic labels have been applied to some, since you draw a contrast between the labels and the “straw men” you say have been erected “even more frequently.” Labels are permissible in our discourse: Christ himself denounces the Nicolaitans, and he refers to a false prophetess as Jezebel (Rev. 2:14, 20).
You later say that “if the sins of unbiblical practice and unconfessional belief that are currently being voiced with such vigor were true, we would agree that they should be opposed.” Men are not known by self-testimony (Jn. 5:31), but by their deeds: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16). A professed orthodoxy that does not stand at the point at which truth is attacked is useless speculation, not the robust, active faith that confesses Christ before men. So it is with you in this matter, for the culture’s view of sexuality invades our communion and rather than joining the battle you criticize the war effort and plead the glories of making peace in parliament. You continue:
We hear the concerns of our brothers and rarely disagree with the principles behind them. We believe that we desire the same commitment to Scripture and our Standards that they do!
It is hard to see that there is as great an agreement as you suggest when you maintain a secret organization where others act publicly, and when you elsewhere dispute the propriety of public polemics and favor private interactions between those that disagree. In questions of polity there is of course utter disagreement between your view of subscription and that of others, concerning which it also makes for a strange claim that you have the same commitment to the standards when you consider the permissibility of taking and even teaching exceptions to be essential to the PCA’s effectiveness and assert it incessantly. You then denounce:
Social media characterizations that turn suspicions into speculations that become accusations without proof – to achieve political ends within our church. Where compromise or sin is true and can be proven, we have sessions, presbyteries, and judicial processes to engage.
As “wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19), so also do the nature and consequences of bad deeds testify against them, whether done in public or brought there by exposure. We do not dream up our criticisms, but use as proof that which you yourselves have furnished. A thing is not proved true by the judgments of the courts but can be witnessed and testified to by those who act outside of official processes. You continue:
If we do not find more ways of speaking charitably and biblically to one another in our national discussions, we run the risk of doing damage to the nuanced work of individual local churches.
“You brood of vipers! Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come? . . . do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’” (Matt. 2:7,9). Was John’s personal address there uncharitable? No, for he bore sound testimony to the Pharisees’ true nature – and no one who speaks truth rightly can be deemed uncharitable. Why then do you imagine we wrong you when we testify to the course of your deeds?
Instead of raising and publishing suspicions about brothers we do not know in other regions and presbyteries, it is far healthier and more biblical to trust our churches and sessions to follow our Standards, to believe that they were acting in as good faith as we were, when they took their vows to uphold the Faith. If we can prove otherwise, then we have processes to adjudicate error. But until error is proven, restraint of suspicious expression is a key mark of true faithfulness.
This demands a level of trust that the Holy Spirit works beyond our immediate setting – that pastors will continue to preach “the gospel of God’s grace,” and “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:24, 27), and presbyteries and sessions will address sin and sins as they and their sessions see fit in their contexts.
These are the next four verses of Acts 20:
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.
Blind trust in other professing believers is not a gift of the Spirit, nor is it a virtue. Discernment, however, is. Your point above directly contradicts the passage to which you allude and supplants true wisdom with a naïveté that is not commanded, but rather warned against repeatedly. As for your claim that “until error is proven, restraint of suspicious expression is a key mark of true faithfulness,” I remind you again that all process is instituted against men who are in good standing when charged. If we are not able to oppose the bad behavior of some because they are in good standing and the offense has not been proved by the courts, then you condemn, by implication, Peter’s rebuke of Simon Magus (Acts 8:20-22), Paul’s of Peter (Gal. 2:11-14), and John’s concerning Diotrephes (3 Jn. 9-10), in all of which condemnation of wrong was public (or via letter to a third party) rather than private, and in which it apparently occurred toward people who were in good standing who had not been censured under the prescribed form of the Matthew 18 process. You later say that:
Before the Internet connected everyone, and before online news agencies became conduits for agendas, we trusted local churches, Sessions, and presbyteries – We want to propose that we continue to see this as the most excellent way of caring for the Church, and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
This is historically doubtful. What is done now via the Internet was done in print with equal vigor in previous generations – The Presbyterian Journal comes to mind – and far from trusting others, our forefathers organized and published against them, and eventually separated to form our present denomination. If you mean the period between the PCA’s formation and the popularization of the Internet, your remarks still run counter to what I have heard of the tone of our own polity in its early days. In addition, Jude’s enjoinder to recognize and resist heretics is twisted to say ‘trust other professing believers without question,’ the direct opposite of his point. You continue:
Yes, there will be inaccuracies, even heresy – not because we trust one another, but because God’s Word tells us that there will be. Demas will always be in the church (2 Timothy 4:10). There will always be wolves (Matthew 7, Acts 20).
Misplaced confidence in man does in fact allow the proliferation of heresy, which can only be stopped by decisive action (as is the church’s duty, 1 Cor. 5:1-6; 1 Tim. 1:20; Tit. 1:9, 11) or else divine judgment (Rev. 2:15-16). Such mistaken trust receives God’s censure: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength” (Jer. 17:5). As for Demas, whether or no he was a final apostate or one who stumbled temporarily, his failure recorded in 2 Tim. 4:10 was not being in the church when Paul needed him (“Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me”). As for the universality of wolves, that is no excuse to an apathetic trust, which is what you imply at several points in this letter. You say later:
When we pick apart words and statements, often out of context, we do damage to the fabric of our Witness – We are the better to not go there (and all of us have been guilty!), because to the watching world, we would no longer appear as a community that graciously holds forth truth, but one that is torn and divided – and this invalidates our proclamation.
What you call picking apart words is simply exercising prudence, and far from it being better to “not go there,” we are commanded to test all things in order to hold fast what is good and reject what is bad (1 Thess. 5:21-22). My own belief is that your statements have not been frequently taken out of context by others; and I can attest that I have done my utmost to avoid doing so myself, for I have scoured this letter and other primary sources for many hours and have excised many points, including several full paragraphs, because further reflection made them seem debatable. You also say:
When we speak in extremes, in order to press a position, we hurt those we love, and do damage to our Witness
Scripture deals in extremes: life and death, truth and falsehood, wisdom and folly, wickedness and righteousness. This is no quirk of Hebrew literature but is a true testimony to the nature of our world. There are many matters in which the question is one of two or more alternatives that are largely questions of preference, and which bear consequences that touch rather upon form than essential substance. It is not so with many of our present controversies, which touch upon the essential form of our denomination and the course it will follow in the coming years, not least the question of whether we will be faithful to the truth about sexuality or will follow after other denominations in increasingly tolerating wrong conceptions of it. You later say:
Under the flag of, ‘they said it publicly, so we can challenge them publicly,’ friends have been pitted against friends – with no attempts to contact one another personally!
If the friends in question, whomever they may be, are worthy of the name they will no doubt contact each other personally rather than allow strangers to stir them up to mutual distrust. Also, there is no mandate to speak privately with those whom one believes err publicly, and the scriptural data suggest the propriety of public confrontation when it affects third parties (Prov. 18:17; Gal. 2:11-14; 1 Tim. 5:20).
You also say that “strangers have attacked strangers behind the safe confines of computers, news agencies, and conferences,” which “proliferates fear and distrust,” and that “there will always be people who are all about power.” In all of this I remind you that you hide yourselves behind confines safer than the things you mention here, all of which are at least public, and that your organization has a clever scheme to use committee assignments and other machinery of the General Assembly and presbyteries to accomplish a desired agenda.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.