WWUTT 2590 Q&A Hope for Today, A Great Awakwning Review, What's With the CREC?

The world is in chaos. What kind of hope should we be holding on to? What is the film A Great Awakening about, and should you go see it? And what is the CREC, and should you join it? The answers when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

God Sits Enthroned Over a Wicked World

Thank you, Becky. I'm starting off with Psalm 9. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exalt in you. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence, for you have maintained my just cause. You have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment. You have rebuked the nations. You have made the wicked perish.

You have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins. Their cities you rooted out. The very memory of them has perished. But the Lord sits enthroned forever.

He has established his throne for justice, and he judges the world with righteousness. He judges the peoples with uprightness. You know, every once in a while I can go into a very dark corner of social media, and it reminds me of just how wicked things are out there.

People are living in war-torn, violent areas, and they see wickedness around them all the time. You know if you turn on the news that we've got conflicts going on in Iran, between the Ukraine and Russia, and that's not even to speak of things that may be happening in your own neighborhood, or just down the street in your city, or something like that.

There's wickedness around every corner, in every dark shadow, and sometimes even out in broad daylight. We can see all of the wickedness that's going on around us. You don't have to look very hard to find it.

In fact, a lot of times we probably have rose-colored glasses on and just refuse to even acknowledge that it's there. But once you see it, it can feel like, how can anything good be coming out of this?

Is everything just going to get worse and worse and worse? Is God even doing anything in the midst of all that I see, in the midst of everything that's going on around me? But remember what Peter said in 2 Peter 3.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, some count slowness, but he's patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord, talking about the judgment of God, when it comes, it will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

God's judgment is coming, and he is not letting the wicked get away with it. In fact, the consequences for their evil, they will receive even as we see it happen. We do see justice being done in the earth.

So the wicked do perish, and the judgment of God that will come upon them, he blots out their name forever and ever, but God sits enthroned forever. He will never be dethroned. There's not anything that is happening that is outside of God's control.

He knows all and holds everything, upholds everything in his hand. In fact, as the Apostle Paul puts it to the Colossians, in him all things hold together. The entire universe would be flying apart if it wasn't for the fact that Jesus is here, and he is holding all things in his hands.

Do not get discouraged, because there is something that God is doing in the midst of the difficulty and the evil and everything else that we see going on all around us. God would not be allowing it to happen if it was not for some great and ultimate purpose.

And remember that great promise that is given to us in Romans 8, 28. All things work together for good. All things, all things, everything works together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Even this difficult trial, this drama, this unexpected news, this difficult season, this is happening ultimately for your good. Do you trust God to know that he is working something out that's really incredible, that you would not even understand how great it is if he told you what it was going to be.

That's the way the Lord responds to Habakkuk in Habakkuk chapter 1. I am doing something you would not know even if I told you. But we're going to get to the other side one day. We will stand there and look back on everything and it will make sense.

How God was working in the midst of all of these things for our good and for the glory of his great name. And so trust God. He sits enthroned. And until he returns or we go and join him, whichever event happens first, share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others because there is no other deliverance in this world except by faith in Jesus Christ.

There's no way for us to not perish along with the wicked except that we believe in Jesus Christ by faith. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text. This is the Friday edition of the broadcast.

Listener Questions and Show Updates

Becky is not along with me. I'm flying solo and I'm going to do something a little quicker here. Not a full hour-long broadcast. I'm already late in publishing this. I'm tired. It's been a long week.

Becky hasn't been feeling well and that's why she isn't along with me for this time around. But I still wanted to get something out on Friday. So I got a few questions to respond to. If you have a question, you can email it to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And I think I'm caught up on everything. When I answer these questions that I have today, I think I'm caught up on everything. So we need some more questions. Restock our questions here in the inbox. Whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or once again, you can send us a voicemail going to the website www .utt .com and click on the...

Oh, I can't even remember what it is now. I've been so confused on this because the website's been messed up. Hang on. Yeah, it's still not working. Hang on. You have to type in www .utt .com. Okay, if you click on contact, then it sends us a voicemail by clicking here.

It says it right there. So click that and you can record a voicemail from your computer or from your phone. Yeah, I've been so busy, I hadn't even been able to correct the stuff on the website. But I tell you what, if you want to go directly to the service that we use to record a voicemail, you're going to speakpipe .com slash www .utt.

So the program where we get voicemails from people, record it from whatever device. Go to speakpipe .com slash www .utt. And that's the other way that you can record us a voicemail. So I've got one here by Scott and we'll listen to what Scott has to share.

This is the only voicemail I got this week.

Hello there, Pastor Gabe. Hello, Becky. This is your brother in Christ in the great Northwest. This is Scott. Yeah, I heard you guys moved to a bigger facility.

Praise God.

Is your P .O. box the same? Is it still Casa Grande? I mean Reformed Baptist Casa Grande or have you changed to a different P .O. box?

If you have,.

Would you please send me an email with your new P .O. box because that way I can continue to send you guys gifts and it's just my joy to do that. I love it because you guys have blessed me so much with especially the teaching and acts, Jeremiah, and of course the question and answer.

I'm happy to see you all back in Casa Grande where the temperature is going to start rising higher and higher where the sun will say I'm going to go there for vacation. Anyway, you all have a great day.

Be blessed, be encouraged, and go serve your King.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much, Brother Scott. Yes, the church's mailing address is still the same P .O. box. So he was referring to us changing locations. We moved into a larger facility. We still have the same church building, same place it's always been located.

But for Sunday morning services, we are not able to fit in this building anymore. Our capacity in this building is something like, I don't know what the total number of chairs is now. Maybe 130? Might be a little bit less than that.

126 or somewhere in there. And the weekend before we moved into this new facility, we maxed out at 143. So we have more people coming to our church than we had chairs. There were people standing. There were people sitting in the foyer in fold-out chairs.

There were people standing. We even had doors open at one point. And already that's like beyond fire code. If the fire marshal knew about that, he probably would have been upset. So we fit as many people into this building as we could.

Still with a nursery, still with bathrooms and a kitchen. So there may be some walls that we can knock out, shrink the size of the bathrooms to one toilet each. But yeah, instead of doing that, we thought now we need a bigger facility.

So the church, Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Casa Grande, Arizona, is now meeting at Villago Middle School in their multipurpose room. And there's a lot more room in there. So even the number of people that we have in there, we could double it and still fit everybody in there.

We're expecting that we may, God willing, we may break the 200 threshold sometime this year. We've got a couple of people that are optimistic about it, that we're going to get that high. But anyway, in the meantime, I appreciate your support and thank you, Scott.

And yes, we do have the same P .O. Box, P .O. Box 11181, Casa Grande, Arizona 85130. So if you want to mail anything to the church, that's where you want to mail it to. Providence Reformed Baptist Church.

If you want to put attention, Pastor Gabe on there, you can. P .O. Box 11181, Casa Grande, Arizona 85130. I love having a P .O. Box because if we change locations, the box can just stay the same. That doesn't have to change.

Plus, it keeps our physical location away from people. It's not as easy to find us. I mean, it is easy to find us. If you know how to use Google, you can find us. But most people aren't going to bother.

If you don't make it easy for them to find you, then they won't bother doing the whole search thing. So that's what's nice about the P .O. Box is I can just tell you to send something there. You don't know where my house is or anything like that.

But we do love receiving letters from people. Sometimes we get handwritten letters and sometimes gifts in the mail and things like that. So we thank you so much for your support, Scott. The gifts that you've sent to us as well.

And be praying for us, for our church, because though we are in this larger space, it's a middle school, so it doesn't belong to us. And it would be much better for us to have our own facility. We're hoping that something becomes available in town that's going to be affordable for us.

Maybe even a partnership with another church that's dying and they just don't want to give their building away to anybody. Or, God willing, we could purchase land and build our own facility. We've already talked to an architect.

We've got blueprints that are drawn up. We just don't have the land to put them on right now. So all of that in God's good timing. In the meantime, he's been very good to us and has blessed our congregation.

And we continue to grow and reach out with the gospel in our community. And so we thank you for praying for us and keeping track of all the stuff that we've got going on. Part of all this, the move and everything else, it's the reason why I'm so tired.

And maybe even Becky's a little bit under the weather, so she couldn't join us for this. I got a comment on a video. Don't forget about the What videos. YouTube .com slash WWUTT. I believe that's the What channel.

This is from Cameron Emily. I really appreciate you, Gabe and Babe. We haven't been called that in a while. Cameron, you're the first one in a while to call us that. I found out about you through Justin Peters a couple years ago.

Good brother. I binge listen to your podcast all the time. I also enjoy watching y 'all's church online. Yeah, even though we've moved to this other facility, we're still live streaming our services. So you can still find all that info, like the link to watch the services, all that's on our website, Providence Casagrande .com.

A Great Awakening Review

This next email, this is from Ryan, and he's inquiring about the film A Great Awakening, and if I've seen it. Hey, Gabe, I'm looking forward to hearing your review on A Great Awakening. Did you hear Todd Friel's review yet?

He recommended it greatly. This is my review. So here's his movie review. A Great Awakening exceeded my expectations. Very well done. Very impactful, inspiring, and very historically accurate, even if you're not a fan of history.

Much of the script slash dialogue came from George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin's writings. Franklin printed many of Whitefield's sermons. It was genuine how they portrayed them both in their attributes and their flaws.

It told a compelling story theatrically and biblically. They harmonized the historical and religious aspects very well. It had some good moments of lightheartedness and laughter and many moments that were profoundly dramatic.

The preaching was completely biblical. It made me grateful for how God used this movement to spread his glorious gospel salvation through Christ alone, even through the ups and downs of the birth of America and how our country was founded.

I highly recommend this movie. 250 years in the making. Thank you for that review, Ryan. I don't have one of my own because I haven't seen the film yet. I know it's terrible of me. All these other movies that I go watch that are awful and I give my reviews about how unbiblical they are.

Here you've got a biblical movie that's out in theaters and I haven't seen it yet. In my town, the local theater, there are no showings in the late afternoon and evening. I think the latest I can go see the film is like two o 'clock.

So that's part of the reason why I haven't been able to see it yet. They are only showing it matinee. So sometime this next week, I'm going to try to see the film. It may not even be in my theater for very long.

I think it's been out by, you know, what is it two weeks now? So with how quickly things are in the theater and then move out thanks to streaming and otherwise, I may not have much longer if it's still in the theater at all, but I do mean to see this film and I thank you for the reminder and for your great review, which I've read now here on the podcast.

Now, as for Todd Friel's review, I'm sure he did a longer review on Wretched Radio. I haven't listened to Wretched this past week. Oh, by the way, we were on Wretched Radio. Did you catch me and Jim Osmond and Justin Peters?

I know that was bad English. So Jim Osmond, Justin Peters, and me. Did you catch us on Wretched Radio? It was two weeks, two or three weeks ago. It was one of the Monday episodes.

I remember.

Anyway, we recorded that like back in September. Oh, it was the Monday right before Easter. That's when it was. That was when we were on Wretched. Anyway, got a couple of emails from folks saying they heard it and.

Loved it.

So we talked about like church polity and church discipline and things like that. Anyway, but yeah, thanks for it. Thanks to Todd and Jimmy for having us on Wretched. We were kind of filling in for Todd while he was doing something else, probably going and watching this movie.

He was off watching movies and we were hosting Wretched in his absence. Anyway, here was Todd Friel. I didn't listen to his review on Wretched Radio. Like I said, I still have to catch up with that one.

But here's the video that I saw that he did. Very quick video on seeing The Great Awakening in theaters.

About to go into The Great Awakening, not some weird revival.

Meeting.

It's a movie titled Great Awakening about George Whitfield and his relationship with Ben Franklin. Ray Comfort saw it. He said it made him cry. But then again, Ray Comfort is kind of a crybaby. Maybe it was just really bad.

Well, I'll watch it. Let you know.

Tell you there is only one book we only must be written and that is the Lamb's Book of Life. It's only written there.

Cry like a baby? Not like a baby. Especially effective. The preaching because it was straightforward Bible and it was straightforward word. Should you go see The Great Awakening? About as fast as you can.

That's a great review. So should you go see The Great Awakening? Yes, go see it. And there you have an endorsement from Ryan and Todd and I'm just saying thank you to them for giving the endorsement since I haven't seen the film yet.

But yeah, great movie. Again, it's about George Whitfield and Benjamin Franklin, the friendship that they had, even though as far as I know, Ben Franklin never became a Christian. But the preaching of George Whitfield during The Great Awakening and some of the things that were happening in the history of the United States as the country was being founded.

Great film. Catch it in theaters if you are able and most likely it's going to end up on streaming soon. Anyway, I got enough time for one more question here and this one comes from Faith. I've already received this email from her and responded to it.

And so here I'm reading her email and my response and expounding on that a little bit as well. Good morning, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I pray your whole family has had safe travels these past weeks. I was devastated to hear about your father's diagnosis of Lewy body.

Dementia.

That's my dad. My own grandmother has been battling the same disease for over five years now. It's such a heartbreaking thing to witness. We are continually praying for your father specifically that he continues to remember his love for God.

I appreciate that faith. And yeah, it was back in March that myself and the rest of the family. We went all the way back to Georgia traveled from Arizona to Georgia to go see my dad. We saw Becky's family, some of Becky's family, including her grandfather in Southwest Kansas was part of that trip as well.

But being able to see my dad very rough shape. He did not recognize me. He knew my voice and when we were talking things were fine, but then just kind of randomly, he would say, is Gabe here yet? When I've been sitting there talking with him the entire time, so he doesn't really remember me anymore, but I do pray that he would remember the gospel and I thank you for that faith praying that he would remember the truth that he committed so much of his life to sharing planning Christian radio station so that the message of the gospel would go out further and further to more and more people.

That is our hope as I mentioned at the very beginning, the the only hope that we have after this life after death a solution to our death problem. The only hope we have is Christ. So praying that he continues to hold on to that hope even as his mind is failing him in so many other areas.

Anyway, faith goes on that wasn't the main reason for her email, but I do appreciate the good wishes and the prayers. She says my husband and I recently attended a CREC Church for their Good Friday service after being invited by some of his co-workers.

I've attempted to familiarize myself with their beliefs, but it's honestly extremely difficult to understand what I'm reading. Could you possibly summarize how they differ from reformed Baptist or if you're aware of any blatantly concerning teachings, my family is so very grateful for your ministry.

You've truly blessed my family with your teachings. Sincerely faith. Well faith, I thank you for that email and the Lord did indeed keep us safe during our travels. I think as far as hiccups go like just in the traveling process, you know being on the road in a vehicle and covering about 5 ,000 miles, which is about what we did on that trip was like 4 ,600 something.

But anyway, what the as far as trips go in a van with seven people in it, it went off without a hitch. I think this was probably the least eventful road trip that we've taken like that. We always end up losing a belt or a tire or something and it doesn't even matter how much how many checks I've done before we hit the road and make sure like the vehicle is totally roadworthy.

We'll still end up with some sort of a problem. But this trip we did not. We knew that the the brakes were kind of rough and and our friends Bob and Wanda out in Lindale helped us out with that. We could have done it on the brakes that we had but it was just nice to know that that our brakes were being taken care of and somebody was caring for us.

So we're very thankful for them. And of course to the Lord keeping us safe on that whole journey. Now that regarding your the question that you actually asked here regarding the CREC which stands for the communion of Reformed Evangelical churches.

This is the denomination that was founded by Doug Wilson and I I was not aware of how old it was until fairly recently. I thought that the CREC was, you know, like just within the past decade Doug Wilson founded it but this really goes back quite a bit further than that when there was the whole federal vision controversy that Doug Wilson was one of the authors of I'm going to mention something else about that here in a moment.

But but even before that whole controversy before the drafted statement by the architects of federal vision for those of you who know that what that is the CREC existed even then because some of the signatories on their mention that they're part of that denomination if you might call it that the communion of Reformed Evangelical churches Doug Wilson just kind of formed his own denomination.

I mean, he's Presbyterian, but he went about he's gone about his Presbyterianism in a very Baptist polity way. It's very independent. It is not in submission to a Presbytery which which is kind of needed to be Presbyterian.

But anyway, I I will poke fun at independent Presbyterian churches because I'm like, hey, there's just a couple more things you need to change and you can come over and join us Baptist. You know, you want to be Baptist you already envy our polity.

You need to respect and join our baptism as well. So anyway going on they they have tried to make it the CREC has tried to make it so that either a Presbyterian or Reformed Baptist Church can join it.

However, I have significant differences with the CREC and I would not be able to join it in good conscience. I can't fellowship with the CREC in a good conscience. So the CREC requires all member churches whether they are credo Baptist or pedo Baptist by conviction to recognize pedo baptism and pedo communion.

So even if we as a church don't practice pedo baptism and pedo communion, if somebody from another church, well, let me set this let me set this up for you in this way. Let's say my church had joined the CREC as a Reformed Baptist congregation and a couple with five children from a Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, which is just up the road from us, you know, takes 40 minutes to get into Phoenix or something like that from where we.

Are.

So somebody in Phoenix saw that my church is a CREC fellowship church and it's closer to them than the church they've been going to in Phoenix. So they thought, hey, to save on the drive time and not having to battle traffic.

Let's just go to this Reformed Baptist Church over here in Casa.

Grande.

So they begin attending hours. Now, my church and our elders would be required to recognize that all five of their children are baptized believers and we could not withhold communion from any of them, even if they were one or two years old.

And that goes against a Reformed Baptist Confession of Faith, such as the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689. There are things about the CREC that I don't understand how Reformed Baptist Church can join it.

Because there would be some things you would have to compromise from your own statement of faith in order to be a part of the CREC. There are some Presbyterians that cannot even in good conscience join the CREC.

Michael Foster is one of them. So he's a Presbyterian minister in practice, but his church withdrew from the CREC over this and and with Foster's church, Foster, by the way, is the author of the book.

It's good to be a man. If you've heard of Michael Foster before anyway, though, they recognize and practice pedo-baptism. They're a practicing Presbyterian church in that sense. They are a credo communion church.

So that means they'll baptize babies, but they can't partake in communion until they get older and make a profession of faith. Baptism alone is not enough to permit someone to come to the Lord's table.

There must be a credible confession of faith, a way to examine that a person can eat and drink of the body and blood of the Lord without profaning it. That's a direct instruction in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul is giving instructions regarding the proper practice of the Lord's table.

And he warns the church about partaking in eating the body and blood of the Lord in an unworthy manner. So examine yourselves. Well, if you have a child who's one or two years old, how do they examine themselves?

They can't do that, which is why most Presbyterians, though they practice pedo-baptism, don't also practice pedo-communion. Because baptism alone, once again, baptism alone is not enough to permit someone to come to the Lord's table.

And we discipline people in our church. We have had to do that before. 16 years of pastoral ministry for me now, and I've had to do this. Every church that I've attended, there's somebody that, every church I've attended, every church I've pastored, there's somebody that we've had to confront and say something to the effect of not taking the Lord's table right now because of this unresolved sin matter in their life.

Like we've had to discipline somebody in that way. So there have been periods in our body where we may have to restrict certain adults from taking communion because they're under some form of church discipline.

And that's according to 1 Corinthians 11, 27 to 32. And it's also reflected in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is our Confession of Faith, chapter 30, paragraph 8. But because of the CREC requirements, there's no way I'd be able to fence the table consistently between adults and children.

Because I'd have to defer to the parents to let their children partake of the Lord's table when my role as an elder, as a shepherd, is to examine everybody who would come to the Lord's table. And if I see that there is a problem or a sin fencing the table, as we would call it, and I can't consistently do that under the CREC requirements.

Now, I don't think that the CREC is unchristian or anything like that, nor would I have any grave concerns if a member of my church moved and began attending a church that was in the CREC. That's not immediately a red flag for me.

Might be a yellow flag, but it's not immediately like, oh, they've stepped out of the faith. I'm certainly not going to think that. But I, for one, could not join and I would discourage any Reformed Baptist congregation from joining.

In fact, I'm even aware of a church nearby to where we are that joined the CREC, and I don't know how many years this took, if it even did take several years, but this Reformed Baptist Church joined the CREC and little by little over time, they eventually became a Pato Baptist Church, so baptizing infants.

This was a formerly Reformed Baptist Church. They became Pato Baptist and then eventually Pato Communion. And that is exactly what Doug Wilson and the other men who founded the CREC, that's exactly what they want.

They're not trying to preserve a Reformed Baptist way. They'd love for Reformed Baptists to join the CREC and become Pato Baptist and Pato Communion. And don't think that Doug Wilson's Federal Vision Theology doesn't have anything to do with this.

It very much does. So it plays into this whole thing and it is taught in the CREC. So that's another yellow flag for me when it comes to somebody that might be joining a CREC church. Federal Vision, the Federal Vision controversy is there.

And you are going to be affected by it in some way or yeah, like whether it's you directly or it's your elders or Sunday school teachers or otherwise. And Federal Vision is a heterodox theology. I love a lot of the cultural commentary that Doug Wilson will do.

I don't like his theology. I think his theology, frankly, is kind of a mess. And so those elements do exist within the CREC founded by Wilson and the other men who did so alongside of him. Just a number of different reasons why my church would not be able to be in fellowship with the CREC.

Now, not every church is going to be the same. It's the same way with, you know, when somebody would ask me about joining a Southern Baptist Church. I was the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

As many of you know, especially if you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, we'd have many young families in that church. Sometimes a couple will have just gotten married. The military would relocate them to Fort Riley right there in Junction.

City.

And that young couple would join our church. It would become the first church that as a couple, they became members of. And so I was often asked because two years later, the military would move them to another place.

So I was often asked, like, can we just go to the Southern Baptist Church in the next town that we go to? And I'd tell them, no, don't believe that every Southern Baptist Church is teaching the same way that we do.

And then I would tell them, here's what you want to be looking for in the next church that you guys would join. And it's the same thing with the CREC. They're not exactly all going to be the same. So you have to examine that.

Like, if you're moving to a new community and the only Reformed Baptist Church in town is also part of the CREC, well, I wouldn't tell you to not go there because they're part of the CREC. But you still have to have your antennas up.

You got to be careful because there are some things that are being taught theologically out of Wilson's camp that I don't think are biblically healthy. And I don't think that the CREC is biblically faithful in their polity and in their statement of faith.

And this is beyond just the usual differences that Baptists would have with Presbyterians. Because as I pointed out, even Presbyterian ministers have some issues with the CREC and they themselves wouldn't be able to join it either.

But anyway, Faith, I hope that that answer is helpful for you and I appreciate you listening and sending that email. And folks, if there's any other questions you have, be sure to send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or go to, once again, speakpipe .com slash wwutt and that's where you can record us a voicemail either from your phone or from your computer.

Thank you so much and God bless. God willing, we'll be back with you next week and Becky will be along with me too. Thank you for listening and for sharing this podcast with others.

This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good gospel-teaching, Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again Monday for more Bible study, When We Understand the Text.