On The Existence of Wolves

A Sobering Sentence From Professor Murray

Dear Friends,

Step into my study. Can I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

I’ve been having some sobering thoughts I’d like to share with you, as I think they may prove to have some helpful explanatory power regarding a phenomenon in online Reformed and evangelical circles. As you know, this newsletter has spent a lot of effort over the past two years dealing with an inchoate movement of “Christian Nationalists,” “Theobros,” or what I’ve termed the right-wing “Neo-Masculinists” or “Baptized Bronze Age Perverts.” (If you haven’t seen it, you can view my talk on this topic at TruthXChange last August.)

The nettlesome, troubling thing is that so many of these folks, named and anonymous alike, profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and claim to embrace the gospel of his kingdom. Some of them fashion themselves pastors and have planted churches. The mantra of the whole movement is “Christ is Lord.”

And yet the whole ecosystem is filled to the brim with racial vainglory, antisemitism, disrespect of elders, and a whole litany of what Paul says are fruits of the flesh: hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy (Galatians 5:20). James could not possibly have put this any clearer:

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water (James 3:9-12).

I won’t beat around the bush. One reason this ecosystem is proving so troublesome is that a great many of these men do not know the Lord. They produce fruits of the flesh because they are of the flesh. They are stiff-necked and refuse correction because they have hearts of stone. I grant that it is impolite to question someone’s profession of faith, and I understand why one would be hesitant to do so—I myself have long been hesitant to do so. It appears very ungracious.

But the question cannot ultimately be avoided. The fact is that the right-wing racists use their professions of faith to insulate themselves from criticism; that is, they weaponize their status as “brothers.” They proclaim themselves entitled to brotherly treatment—they want “biblical” procedures in dealing with conflict (e.g., Matthew 18). When they are criticized, they lament what they call “brother wars” (a term taken, not coincidentally, from white supremacist circles).

But just saying “Christ is Lord” and claiming to be a “brother” is insufficient. Jesus himself emphatically teaches that at the Day of Judgment there will be “many” totally convinced of their status, people who devoted their whole lives to doing things for the “Lord, Lord!” only to be told “Depart from me; I never knew you.”

In one of the greatest metaphors ever invented, Jesus warns of “wolves” in sheep’s clothing. The whole point is that wolves—false teachers—look like sheep. They disguise themselves. They carry Bibles and quote from them. They know the language of Christianity. They even sometimes preach it. But Jesus says they will be known by their fruits. And the fruits are manifest.

Irenaeus (A.D. 122-202) reminds us:

Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself […] Lest, therefore, through my neglect, some should be carried off, even as sheep are by wolves, while they perceive not the true character of these men,—because they outwardly are covered with sheep’s clothing (against whom the Lord has enjoined us to be on our guard), and because their language resembles ours, while their sentiments are very different.

I admit that it can sound positively crazy to suggest that certain men, church planters and pastors outwardly zealous for the name of Jesus Christ, are not, in fact, united to him by a genuinely true and living faith. How can that guy, so bold and earnest and fearless in proclaiming that “Christ is Lord” not really belong to Christ?

That is a good question, and it brings to mind what is likely the most sobering sentence I have ever read. It comes from the pen of the late John Murray, professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, in his truly priceless little book Redemption: Accomplished & Applied. He is addressing the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, and the question of how it is that people with all the outward appearance of being “believers” fall away and apostatize (and also how this reality comports with the Reformed and biblical doctrine that Jesus shall lose none of his own, but raise them up at the last day). Murray writes:

The Scripture itself, therefore, leads us to the conclusion that it is possible to have very uplifting, ennobling, reforming, and exhilarating experience of the power and truth of the gospel, to come into such close contact with the supernatural forces which are operative in God’s kingdom of grace that these forces produce effects in us which to human observation are hardly distinguishable from those produced by God’s regenerating and sanctifying grace and yet be not partakers of Christ and heirs of eternal life.

So profound and staggering is every word that you should read it again slowly. Murray is observing, by way of careful Scriptural consideration, that the Holy Spirit’s power in the kingdom of God is so potent that it can produce what looks every bit to the human eye like regeneration in people who are not actually regenerate. If I may put it in more contemporary and crude terms, there is the possibility—no reality—of something like a “contact high” in the kingdom of God. Just being in the vicinity of the Spirit’s power can bring about a kind of Spiritual transformation of a person that nevertheless falls short of being made a “partaker of Christ.”

Sobering, isn’t it? A thought that ought to cause us all to examine ourselves and, in so doing, to quickly and immediately get outside ourselves and flee to Christ himself. For persevering faith is the instrument that saves, and the only way to have persevering faith is to persevere in faith. No resting on laurels. There is no “having arrived” until one actually arrives. So the road of faith must be continually traveled, desperately clinging to Christ by the aid and power of the Spirit until at last our faith is made sight.

I am suggesting that it should not be surprising at all that there are outwardly bold and zealous men who are not, in fact, abiding in Christ, but rather resting on their platforms and popularity and clicks and followers and conference invitations. Lord, Lord, did we not own the libs in your name?

The fact that there is ecclesial fracture in our world is a curse and a blessing. It is a curse because there exists no institutional way of dealing with such men. They can’t be disciplined or excommunicated from churches they don’t belong to. It doesn’t matter who denounces them. They can hang out a shingle on any street corner with the name of some new shiny church they plant, or just fire up yet another long-winded podcast and gather followers. But I suggest therein is a blessing, as well. There are no institutional obstacles to calling them out; they are not entitled to “Matthew 18” procedures or any Presbyterian(ish) process of doing things “decently and in order.” They do not submit to anyone or anything and there is literally nothing stopping responsible leaders from simply pointing to the wolves and warning the sheep. Given the upheaval and conflict they continue to cause, it would go a long way for people to simply entertain the notion that these men are not Christians and to stop treating them as such.

I’ll go first. I believe Joel Webbon is a wolf. I think the pastors of Refuge Church in Ogden, Utah, Brian Sauvé and Eric Conn, are wolves. I think Andrew Isker is a wolf. I am sure there are more, but I don’t spend my time closely observing this ecosystem any longer. Steer clear of them all. That doesn’t mean everything they do is bad, doesn’t mean all their gospel preaching—to the extent that that happens—is ineffective. God can make asses talk, stones to cry out, and broken clocks are still right twice a day. But the overall fruit of their “ministries” suggests that whatever good there might be is of the “contact high” variety.

---

Thanks for joining me in my study for a pipe and dram. Next time we’ll talk of pleasanter things!