Comments On Excerpts From W.E. Best - 1:27 PM, 9/13/2011 | |
View Profile History Comments On Excerpts From W.E. Best Bernard Pyron W.E. Best says "BIBLICAL TRUTH: Neither the prophets nor the apostles spiritualized away the final culmination of human history into pure subjectivity. A literal prophecy spiritualized is exegetical fraud. It makes as much sense to spiritualize Christ’s first advent as His second advent. Amillennialism is a taunting dream, whereas a future kingdom with the Son of Man on the throne is an energizing hope which purifies the elect (Luke 1:32; I John 3:2,3)." This is ambiguous. The question is what does he mean by "spiritualized?" He sounds like he is opposing the broad sweeping allegorical interpretations of Origen, a method which was taken up by Augustine, and by the Catholic Church, and then by Calvinism after the Reformation. The dispensatinalists over-reacted against these broad sweeping allegorical interpretations, and gave us a system of "hermeneutics" which is not worakable, in part because the literal method of Bible interpretation cannot be applied consistently to all Scripture. It tends to distort parables and metaphors which are found in so many Bible texts. So, was W.E. Best here influenced by dispensationalism? I thought when I first started reading this that he might belong to the Reformed Camp. I found an interesting use of the word "assembly" by W. E. Best. He says "The supreme mission of the assembly of Jesus Christ is to glorify God, but this may be done only as she earnestly contends “for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3)." And he says "The assembly must be separated from the world in order to minister to it." If he is using "assembly" to avoid the use of "church" that is interesting. But from what he says I can't tell for sure that this is what he is doing. Is he questioning the use of the "church" as a separate body of Christ, separate from Israel? What I found on him in a brief search on Google doesn't say whether he belonged to a Reformed group. Some contemporary Reformed leaders say the "church" is Israel, and some orthodox Lutherans agree. But they don't question the "church" as a separate body of Christ. Best says "All whom God foreordained to salvation will be glorified (Rom. 8:28-34). The foreordained, predestinated, called, justified, and glorified are equal in number. God never starts something that He is incapable of bringing to its foreordained conclusion (Phil. 1:6)." This sounds like Calvinism. He also says "Christians are neither regenerated nor glorified gradually. Both are instantaneous. The Bible teaches that when redemption is applied to souls or bodies, it is complete and forever. The Charismatics reach the unavoidable conclusion that the salvation of one’s soul is like the healing of his body, either of which he can have today and lose tomorrow." This also sounds like Calvinism. If what he says is true of all believers, then Satan could not lure those who believe into false doctrines. And those who as Baby Christians have an experience from the Holy Spirit which brings them to believe what they know of the Gospel, they may then go on to grow up in Christ and know and believe much more of the doctrines of Christ, and come to have a love of Christ as the truth himself and a love for his doctrines. This is all a process, not instantaneous. "Wilbern Elias "W. E." Best was born on June 18, 1919, in east Texas. He was the youngest of five children. He made a false profession of faith at 15. At 20, God changed his heart and life, and W. E. genuinely repented, converted, and knew he was called to preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of our assembly members served with and were shepherded by pastor Best (or as Christian brethren often address each other, "by Brother Best") for over 50 years. As of December 2006, our pastor retired. On Friday, June 15, 2007, Bro. Best went home to be with the Lord." Many of the writings of W.E. Best are available online. at: http://www.webbmt.org/EnglishBooks.htm There are both contemporary and past Christians who have been associated with Reformed theology, but who follow historical premillennialism; they believe that Christ will set up his kingdom on earth as Revelation 20: 1-5 says, but they do not believe in a pre-trib rapture nor in Jewish supremacy as do the dispensationalist premillennialists. You can Google this topic and find which recent Calvinists were historical premillennialiss. And there have been Reformed leaders in the past who did not dwell on the five points of orthodox Calvinism. I have a book on the writings of the English evangelist Richard Sibbes (1577-1635), who is classified as a Calvinist. In these writings Sibbes does not get into predestination or the other starting points of what we think of as Calvinism. He an evangelist, and spiritually a rival leader to William Ames (1576-1633). Ames spent time in Holland and his Calvinism was closer to Dutch Calvinism than was that of Richard Sibbes. And importantly, William Ames was the spiritual father of the New England Puritans. The Calvinism of the New England Puritans, closer to Dutch Calvinism, was a different breed of theology than that of the Scotch-Irish followers of John Knox, Samuel Rutherford and other leaders of the Calvinism of Scotland. The emphasis in Puritan theology upon one's occupational calling and making that a success, plus Calvin's liberalization of the Biblical teaching against usury, contributed to the descendants of the original New England Puritans to becoming a money elite (by the time of the War of Northern Aggression). And it happened that one of the backbones of the Southern resistance to the rule of the New England, former Puritan elite, was the Scotch-Irish of the South who were Calvinists but not of the Calvinism of New England. The ancestors of those Scotch-Irish guys of 1861-1865 had fought the English and later again in the American Revolution. The Southern Planter class elite which stood in the way of the New England elite's rule over the entire U.S., and which helped got the South into that war, were derived mostly from Church of England English settlers. The Calvinism of Scotland in John Knox and Samuel Rutherford taught that Christians had a right to defend themselves physically from a totalitarian government and they did not accept the Catholic and Church of England interpretation of Romans 13, that Christians must obey the government no matter what it does to them or to others. Knox had personal experience in resisting a Catholic run government that tried to kill him. That brand of Calvinist theology from Knox and Rutherford was translated into a secular ideology of government as a republic by John Locke. Thomas Jefferson used Locke's writing on government as a foundation for the Declaration of Independence. | |
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