Featured Presbyterians Who Have Yielded Ground...

just saying that sometimes some here seem to think that we hold John C to be same as an Apostle, even though none of us would!

 

How about J Vernon Mcgee?

 

He was trained and ordained I believe by the presby church, and once he started preaching at his Church of the Open Door, he was preaching and teaching pretty much as a Dispy Baptist would be!

 

Thank you for your post. I really don't know any famous Presbyterians who tend to be baptistic. That being said, I believe Presbyterians tend to be much less dogmatic than Baptists on this.

In our church (PCA), we baptize believers and their children. As a result, we see adults, children and infants being baptized. There are at least a couple of reasons why one may see more infant baptisms than adult baptisms in a Presbyterian church.

1 - Most churches are more fertile than evangelistic.

2 - Presbyterian churches typically do not re-baptize. When I joined my church, they accepted my prior Baptist baptism. However, our son currently attends a Baptist church. If he joined there, they would require him to be re-baptized since they would not recognize his Presbyterian baptism.

Hope this is helpful.

 

From what I've read, his background was all over. Not sure that I would count him as a "Presbyterian" leader, per se, like an RC Sproul, Tim Keller, Steve Brown, DJ Kennedy, etc.

From Wiki below:

"He graduated with his B.D. from Columbia Theological Seminary and his Th.M. and Th.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas. McGee's first church was located on a red clay hill in Midway, Georgia. He served Presbyterian churches in Decatur, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cleburne, Texas before he moved with his wife to Pasadena, California, where he accepted a position at the Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church.
He moved from Pasadena to Los Angeles and became the pastor of the Church of the Open Door in 1949, where he continued as pastor until 1970. McGee also served as chairman of the Bible department at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola University) and as a visiting lecturer at Dallas Theological Seminary."

 

R. C. Sproul is an active Presbyterian elder (PCA), but his St. Andrews church is not Presbyterian. I've read that this may be due to the large number of Baptists in the congregation.

 

Personally, I would doubt that. From their web site ---

"Saint Andrew’s was founded in 1997 as an independent congregation in the Reformed tradition. As such, Saint Andrew’s is not affiliated with a particular denomination. That is not to say, however, that we are non-denominational or inter-denominational. On the contrary, Saint Andrew’s is an independent congregation on account of our desire to remain steadfast in the Reformed tradition without the influence of denominational governance. Nevertheless, our pastors are ordained ministers in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)."

I've actually had the opportunity to visit St. Andrew's Chapel, as we have friends who attend that church, and heard Dr. Sproul preach that morning. Wonderful service.

 

Yeah. . .so what do you doubt then?

 

I don't know where you read this, but I highly doubt it. I don't see RC Sproul compromising his beliefs in order to have a larger church. So why are they an "independent Reformed church"? This is from their web site --

"Saint Andrew’s is an independent congregation on account of our desire to remain steadfast in the Reformed tradition without the influence of denominational governance."

In some ways, it seems that this church is more "reformed" than my own PCA church.

 

Sproul's co-Elder Buck Parsons describing their congregants:

Remember the church sprang from a parachurch organization (Ligonier publishing and broadcasting) that's attracted a much wider constituency than just Presbyterians.

A poster at the P-Board paraphrases Sproul's explanation of the situation:

 

"We are new creatures in CHRIST"....not from ANY water....not in ourselves....NO HOW whatsoever OF ourselves.

Christ <<identifies>> with us; and we with Him; but we are not identified with Christ. We, are not Christ; that's pride and delusion.

Christ is not buried with us in our baptism; we are buried together with Christ IN HIS BAPTISM which was a baptism wherewith we cannot ever be baptised because His Baptism was that only baptism with, in and through DEATH and RESURRECTION FROM DEATH.

To baptise was Christ's command to the apostles and to no one else ever! And Christ commanded no water-baptism to the apostles, either, ever!

'Infant-' as 'believer's baptism' is not Christian or Scriptural. It's a relic from unbelievers' Judaism and pagan Catholicism.

'Baptism' in whatever (human) 'FORM' is idolatry.

 

So jesus , when he required us to water batise believers, was wrong?