The Jesuit “mafia” and fog, both literal and figurative, in the churches. These were some of the discussion points brought up by Dr. Paul Elliott in his talks on Day 2 of The Trinity Foundation’s Reformation conference. Dr. Elliott gave two presentations on Saturday 10/28, both of which I would strongly encourage you to listen to when the recordings become available.
The Reformation Is Not a Return to Pre-Reformation Positions
By way of introduction to his opening talk on Saturday, Dr. Elliott mentioned that he is working on a tree volume set on the subject of the corruption of the text of the new testament. As part of his research, Dr. Elliott noted, more often than not, he found that the hand responsible for corrupting the Greek text of the New Testament used in modern translations is, more often than not, that of the Jesuits. He also included a comment by a friend of his warning that his work exposing the Jesuit efforts would not go unnoticed and that it was “dangerous territory.” Dr. Elliott did not use the word “mafia,” but the implication of his words is that there exists something like a Jesuit mafia that seeks to silence the opposition, and do so by violence if necessary.
Dr. Elliott contends that there are forces in the Evangelical movement that are seeking to give Protestantism an “extreme makeover” of the sort one sees on various TV shows, and that the effect of this makeover is that, “the vast majority of the nominally Evangelical church today is rapidly returning to the pre-Reformation position.” Dr. Elliott identified four things that characterized the pre-Reformation church.
First, there was Biblical illiteracy. In the middle ages, Christians did not have access to Bibles in their native language. Today, the problem is that, while “Bibles” are readily available, so-called modern translations such as The Message are corrupt paraphrases, not translations at all. Because they do not faithfully translate the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, they leave people without the Word of God in much the same way as medieval church goers whose only Bible was in Latin, a language that most of them did not understand.
Second, Dr. Elliott identified the problem of Church as an Experience. The Reformation has always emphasized the primacy of preaching, the expositing of the Word of God in understandable, clear language. On the other hand, the Roman Church-State has always made an appeal to the senses with its “smells and bells.”
And just as the pre-Reformation and current Roman Catholic Church emphasized experience over doctrine, so too do neo-evangelicals in the emerging church movement. Dr. Elliott noted that as an observer he attended a trade show dedicated to the “worship market” which, “is now a multi-billion-dollar business.”
Dr. Elliott noted that, “The most popular product in this big exhibit hall was fog machines!,” which allowed churches to generate “different colors of fog” to set the right mood. As Dr. Elliott wryly commented, “Those fog machines were a metaphor for the entire so-called worship conference.”
Third, Dr. Elliott took up the problem of pluralism. By way of example, he cited Timothy Keller saying there may be some “back door way to Heaven” apart from Jesus.
More subtle is the case of John Piper, whom Elliott quotes as saying that we are made right with God by faith but enter heaven by our works.
Finally, Dr. Elliott speaks of the current emphasis on Deeds Instead of Doctrine. As Rick Warren has said, “You know, 500 years ago, the first Reformation with Luther and then Calvin, was about creeds…[the new reformation that we’re bringing about through the Purpose-Driven church] will be about deeds…The first one was about what the church believes…This one will be about what the church does.”
How is the different from what Rome teaches? In truth, not much, if at all. That being the case, it should come as no surprise that Warren is also hard at work trying to re-united Protestants and Romanists. Dr. Elliott reported that Warren was the keynote speaker at Pope Francis final Sunday service when he was in Philadelphia in 2015. Warren, a Southern Baptist, referred to the assembled cardinals, bishops and priests and the pope himself as “brothers.”
Dr. Elliott closed his talk with an encouragement for Christians not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed. We are to be outwardly what we are inwardly. This requires that Christians, “Never be afraid to admit it when you find yourself, or the church, deviating from Scripture in even the smallest point.”
The Reformation Is Not Co-Belligerence with Unbelievers
In his second talk of the afternoon, Dr. Elliott discussed the temptation of Christians to unite with unbelievers, making common cause with them against some perceived greater enemy. He notes that this is not a new problem in the church, but rather a recurring problem.
By way of example, Dr. Elliott took his listeners to the Scriptures, specifically to Luke chapter 3. This is the Biblical account of Peter and John healing the man lame from birth in the temple and the reaction of the Jewish religious leaders, liberal and conservative, backed by the power of the Roman civil authorities.
As Acts 4 tells us, Peter and John were called before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious council, which consisted of the priestly Sadducees (the liberals) and the Pharisees (conservatives). These groups hated each other, but they hated Jesus Christ and his people even more. The Sadducees even had the backing of the Roman civil authorities. The captain of the temple, as Dr. Elliott notes, was a Levite who had the power to call on the Roman soldiers stationed in the Antonia barracks just next to the temple to put down any potential disturbance. It was these groups that laid hands on Peter and John and put them in custody until the council could be assembled the next day for a hearing.
Here, we see all three groups – liberals, conservatives, and the state – united in opposition to the Gospel.
Dr. Elliott goes on to apply this situation to Christians today, specifically as concerns the growing threat from the LGBT movement. “Let me submit this to you. I believe that the situation that is developing within the American church scene, and even within purportedly conservative American churches today, could well lead to this kind of alliance between religious authority and civil authority….How could this happen? …We have entered into a time when sodomy has been established as a civil right. Discrimination against sodomites is rapidly being placed in the same category as discrimination against an individual because of the color of his skin.” Discrimination, Dr. Elliott tells us, on the basis of race is sinful, but discrimination against the sin of sodomy “is the duty of the true church of Jesus Christ.” Elliott tells us that this idea is “rapidly becoming an exceedingly unpopular and unacceptable position” and asserts that, apart from God’s intervention, “will soon become a severe and critical testing point for the true people of Christ.”
This testing will come as a result of “an unholy alliance made up of reputed conservatives as well as liberals” who will join forces “with civil authority in persecuting God’s faithful remnant that stands firm on this particular issue – and on other issues they will decide to single out as targets.” But Christians, must obey God rather than men.
Dr. Elliott drew an interesting parallel between the religious politicians of the first century, the Sadducees, and contemporary politicians who have learned to talk the Evangelical talk. He gave as an example of this Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic who for all the world can sound like an Evangelical and fool many Protestants into supporting him by offering political solutions to the nation’s obvious problems.
But electing “culture warrior” politicians is not the answer for Christians. For our problems are not, in the final analysis, political but spiritual.
Dr. Elliott also brings up the problem of religious conservatives, the Pharisees of the first century, whom he likens to many of the popular Evangelical conservatives of today. He notes that “men like Kenneth Copeland, James Robison and Joel Osteen” have met with Pope Francis. He quotes Copeland in particular as referring to the pope in glowing terms, calling him “a man filled with the love of Jesus.”
Several years back at his rally at the Lincoln Memorial, radio personality Glen Beck brought together “Mormon cultists, and Roman Catholic priests and even Muslim Imams” who proceeded to tell the nation we need to get back to God. But, as Elliot is quick to point out, just what God are these men calling us to return to?
Christians are not to join with such groups. And such intolerance on the part of the Church of Jesus Christ to their ecumenism will be intolerable in the eyes of the men who lead these gatherings. Such a stand will be “extremely annoy” the ecumenists, just as Peter and John’s stance did the united liberal/conservative/statist front of their day.
There, however, a Christian sense to the term “co-belligerence,” which is when the faithful preaching of the Word of God is united with the faithful prayers of God’s people.
Dr. Elliott closed his talk by drawing his hearers attention to a key difference between Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and those who are Christians: the intransmissible, unchangeable priesthood of Christ. “There is no such thing,” Dr. Elliott reminded his hearers, in authentic Christianity as a doctrine of apostolic succession. Christ’s priesthood was never even transmitted to the apostles. It is an exclusive priesthood. No pope, no cardinal, no prominent religious leader or ordinary minister of the Gospel, is, by some manner of succession, a priest of Christ with some alleged special authority.”
Christians have the exclusive right and divinely appointed responsibility to proclaim God’s truth to the world, and we dare not enter into unholy alliances thinking to do God’s work in a way he himself has not commanded.
Dr. Elliott close his talk with an exhortation from 1 Peter 5, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world [or more accurately, throughout the world]. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a wile, perfect, establish , strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and dominion forever and ever.”
Lux Lucet 
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