The Anatomy of Apostasy

The English word "apostasy" comes from the Greek word apostatia . The apo means "away" and the statia means "a standing." So, apostasy is the abandonment of what was once believed. It is the moving away from the standard.

In October of 1997, it came to our attention that a meeting had been called by an organization called: Vision New England. The announced goal of the meeting was to get members of the Evangelical community and the Roman Catholic community to come together for a healthy dialogue on the Evangelical and Catholics Together (ECT) Statement issued in the spring of 1994.

The cover letter announcing the meeting proposed the following:

"In anticipation of our gathering together next Tuesday, October 28, I am enclosing a copy of ECT. Please come having digested this document and be prepared to dialogue with one another on this topic." (Emphasis added)

We accepted the invitation and came prepared to dialogue, having digested the ECT statement. We were not prepared for what ensued at this meeting.

In its promotional brochure, Vision New England touts itself as an organization which hopes to unite Christians for effective evangelism:

"For 110 years Vision New England, formerly known as the Evangelistic Association of New England, has been a cutting-edge ministry that brought believers and churches together for evangelism and renewal. Now the largest regional association in the country, more than 28 Vision New England ministry initiatives serve more than 3,000 churches in 80 denominations."

We mention also that in a hand-out kit given to each participant at the meeting was a one page statement indicating that Steve Macchia, the president of Vision New England, and Fr. John MacInnis started Evangelical/Catholic initiatives as far back as 1990.

With this as a backdrop, we move now to the meeting itself. The format consisted of two guest speakers followed by a lunch and small group meetings. The chief spokesperson for the Evangelical side of things was Dr. Kent Hill, the president of Eastern Nazarene College. The chief spokesperson for Romanism was William F. Murphy, the Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia of the Archdiocese of Boston. Both speakers were original signers of the ECT.

Both men exalted the work of ECT and generally endorsed the document with some minor exceptions. Dr. Hill and William Murphy were both concerned that much more work needed to be done but that all in all, everyone was headed in the right direction. Dr. Hill spoke of two areas of criticism that ECT had received from the Evangelical community. The first was the undermining of evangelism toward Roman Catholics and the second was the vague language used to define "justification." Dr. Hill promised that these misconceptions would be clarified by a forthcoming document which has since come to be known as The Gift of Salvation . (We have reviewed this latest ecumenical tool in our new book, On The Edge of Apostasy.)

The entire morning was taken up with these two speakers in which there was considerable nodding in agreement among the participants. It appeared that the Romish community sent roughly 25 representatives with Evangelicals making up the difference in the room of about 50 people.

Our discouragement began with the realization and growing awareness that this was not going to be a "dialogue over ECT," but rather a celebration and ratification of it. Consequently, we found ourselves in the strictest minority and were saddled with the sad truth that the largest regional professing evangelical association in the nation had already endorsed the ECT. This meeting did not approach the expressed intent of the cover letter. It was an announcement of acceptance. It was not a dialogue to consider the merits of ECT.

Needless to say, we felt like the proverbial jilted lover who went expecting to dialogue with his sweetheart over some flirtations from other boys only to find himself in the middle of her wedding reception. He never knew she was seeing anyone else, let alone getting married. Such is the case with Vision New England.

We wonder out loud how many member churches in New England are aware that their membership dues go in part to funding a leadership that has sold the Gospel down the river to Roman Catholicism? We wonder aloud who empowers men like Steve Macchia to negotiate away the Gospel of God including Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide ? Who are these guys? What is going on in the minds of pastors, deacons, elders and leadership at the local church level which tolerates such open apostasy?

So bizarre and flagrant is the abuse of Christian terminology by Vision New England, that they have the audacity to promote themselves as dedicated to uniting Christians for effective evangelism . We ask, "With what gospel will New England be evangelized?" If Rome is "in" then so is infant baptism for the remission of sin, so are the sacraments, so is purgatory, so is the worship of Mary, so is justification by works produced by grace merited from obedience to Romish religious rituals and superstitions.

For our part, we went to this convocation to dialogue. We went to bear witness that the ECT was perfectly repulsive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We went to challenge the speakers who touted it so highly. We went to show that ECT was anti-Christ if anything at all. We were not received very well.

Having personally stood up and spoken to the entire audience and distributed literature among the participants, I went away heart sick and beat down. To think that such a large segment of Evangelicalism is selling its soul to the Romish religion is enough to cause some sincere reflection on where this nation is headed. It is either a precursor to the curse of God or it is the curse of God itself when apostasy is this bold and this sustained.

Hiding behind words like "grace," "love," "unity," and "peace" along with the catch-all phrase "let us be reconciled," Vision New England has closed the door on any meaningful expression of sound doctrine and theology. We are left with the mush of "do good-ism" and "the elevation of the impoverished masses of humanity which surround us" in the place of the Gospel of Christ.

Mark our words, when such useless trite little phrases like "the Gospel of Jesus Christ is better shown than it is spoken," not only gain the upper-hand but sweep away solid doctrine, we have jettisoned the cause of Christ. When truth is crushed and mangled through the grinder of ecumenical bureaucrats who say such nonsense as, "we have a loving method and God seeks peace and unity with all men," it will not be long before all true believers are forced underground by the apostates. More and more, the apostates control the purse strings of professing evangelicals who are content to see no evil, hear no evil and refuse to speak out against such evil.

We, however, shall speak. With the apostle, we believe, therefore, we speak. With Luther, we can do nothing other than to press the fight to the fore and never ever give in to the ecumania that has diseased the theological immune system of those who call themselves "of Christ." Vision New England, sad to say, is not the exception. They are, however, a frightening illustration of all that is wrong with churches in America.

In a letter written to Mr. Macchia, president of Vision New England, I challenged him to ponder if perhaps he had departed from the faith once delivered among the saints. His response is as follows:

"Finally, Mr. Zins, I find it disconcerting that you could judge my heart as having 'departed from the faith once delivered among the saints.' Like Paul, I don't judge myself, or you, but rather pray for humility and grace, the kind we saw exhibited by our Roman Catholic friends at the dialogue when they encouraged you to speak openly at the luncheon and then offered to hand out your document to those in attendance. This grace looks beyond our differences to the One who reconciled the world to Himself and has given us the ministry of reconciliation."

What Mr. Macchia leaves out of his truncated quotation from the apostle Paul are the two verses immediately preceding it:

"This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy " (1 Corinthians 4:2).

We are not to be blissfully non-judgmental of our gospel and our faithfulness to the Bible, as Mr. Macchia implies. Rather, we are to strive to be faithful, and as Paul says later, "take pains to do what is right." (2 Corinthians 8:21) We strive to be faithful and to judge our actions precisely because it is God who will ultimately judge our fidelity to His gospel.

Mr. Macchia and Vision New England indeed need to "examine themselves to see whether they are in the faith," (2 Corinthians 13:5). They need to cease their ill-fated Romance with Rome and return to safe mooring in the harbor of our Lord's Gospel.