The PuritanBoard, so-called, now fully exposed

"In Suk: I did not grant you permission to do anything but answer questions. Subsequent posts have been deleted." Link

That is from the moderator/administrator of the so-called PuritanBoard. (It sounds like it has the same spirit behind it that fueled the Jesuitical counter-Reformation.)

A contributor named In Suk has been asking about paedo-baptist beliefs and doing it in about as nice a manner as one will find anywhere in internet discourse, but he's been probing too close to the default belief in baptismal regeneration that paedo-baptists hold to without admitting (to others or to themselves, in most cases) that they hold to it*.

It's also a regeneration issue. The same moderator, losing his cool, launched into the usual Federal Vision, Lutheran-esque demands to know how In Suk could know he was regenerate. In Suk gave the answer all Christians who have been regenerated by the Word and the Spirit give: the Spirit testifies to his spirit. I was recently accused by two Lutherans that I couldn't know I was a regenerate Christian without pointing to ritual water baptism as 'evidence' of it. It is the same accusation made by all currently unregenerate (and angry) Christians towards Christians who have been regenerated. John Owen put it well saying it is the same anger Cain had for Abel.

The PuritanBoard is a good example of how churches are taken over by the dumbest, angriest, most bullying members. Rule by lowest common denominator.

The exodus of members (including the many bannings of members) apparently isn't enough to show them that they are not on the straight and narrow but on a path of man-fearing, being respecters of persons, and exalting man and ritual over the Word and the Spirit.

* Romanists bring their unbiblical belief in baptismal regeneration in through the front door in broad daylight. Lutherans bring their unbiblical belief in baptismal regeneration in through the back door in broad daylight. Reformed paedo-baptists bring their unbiblical belief in baptismal regeneration slinking in through the back door in the dead of night.

Question: what is so bad about a belief in baptismal regeneration? Answer: it is the demand of fallen man to be in control of something only God is in control of: regeneration. When a putative Christian demands to have control of regeneration through ritual they are closed off from the Spirit. They exalt man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit. They havn't humbled themselves to the Word and the Spirit (and since they believe ritual has regenerated them they now have given their fallen nature a reason to never be defeated or humbled which practically works itself out in a non-humble approach to the Word of God, i.e. not seeing the Word of God as something that is above them and that doesn't *need* them but seeing the Word of God as something they look down on and that needs them more than they need it; the issues of the received manuscripts vs. the constructed manuscripts comes in here). They are still man-centered and disdain to be God-centered. When they then set themselves up as leaders and teachers (and usually policers) of Christians they take the stench of hell fire onto themselves.

A comment explaining the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai (yet another quick summing up which is constantly needed to counter the slow)

I find it helpful when trying to understand the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai (republication *not* reestablishment; the Covenant of Works still being in effect after the Fall though only as a curse for man who is born with original sin) to consider that National Israel was as unique in God’s plan of redemption as pre-fall Adam was unique and as Jesus incarnate is unique.

Individual Israelites were saved by faith in the coming Messiah just as we are saved by faith in the already come Messiah, but *National Israel* itself was a *proto-type* of the coming Messiah. Their history mirrored Jesus’ history. The republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai was so that it could be seen that Jesus was *born under the law* and fulfilled what the first Adam (Adam in the Garden) failed to fulfill, the Covenant of Works, which was given in elaborated form on Sinai.

There is one way to be saved: works. Either your own (good luck with that) or Jesus’, appropriated by faith in His obedience in life and suffering on the cross.

So the Covenant of Works given on Sinai confuses Christians and theologians who get all wrought up “Salvation is by faith alone!” (as if Thomas Boston, et al, didn’t grasp this) and who get all caught up in trying to see how it applied to the land and obedience to stay in the land, etc., while not seeing the ‘National Israel as type for Jesus aspect of it’. When you see *National* Israel as a type for Jesus Christ, and you see National Israel’s uniqueness in God’s plan, again as unique as pre-fall Adam and Jesus incarnate, it becomes clear. (Their history itself is the very *substance* of the Word of God; while at the same time - it always needs to be stated - *individual* Israelites, to be saved, needed faith in the coming Messiah just as we need to have faith in the already come Messiah.)

The Covenant of Works republished on Sinai was given to National Israel which represented Jesus Christ yet to come. The playing out of all the history that followed was to keep the bloodline from Adam to Christ (the Kingly line) pure (civil laws), to teach of the Messiah through types (the ceremonial laws) and to show (via the moral laws) that fallen man *can’t* follow them, but that the coming Messiah can and will and did follow them.