REFORMED EPISCOPAL BISHOP PLEADS FOR UNITY. RIPS REVISIONISTS

Virtuosity ^ | 28 June 2004 | David Virtue

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REFORMED EPISCOPAL BISHOP PLEADS FOR UNITY. RIPS REVISIONISTS

By David W. Virtue

BEDFORD, TX (6/26/2004)--A leading bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church made a strong plea for orthodox Anglicans to come together stating that they were in spiritual warfare with revisionism. The bishop blasted homosexual behavior saying that it was "repugnant to the almighty" arguing that "we are to image in our societal and familial relations the Holy Family in heaven."

"God took a bride, the church. The groom did not take unto Himself another groom, which is the image portrayed by homosexual union. It is the inversion of the family of God and therefore Satanic," said the Rt. Rev. Ray Sutton. "I agree with the Primate of Nigeria. It is Satanic."

Addressing deputies to the 16th Annual Assembly of Forward in Faith NA at St. Vincent's cathedral, Sutton said the Incarnation re-orders society and family according to the creation image redeemed by the true image of God, Jesus Christ.

The bishop pled for orthodox Anglicans to come together. "It's not other biblically orthodox Anglican Christians, not Anglo Catholics, the Evangelicals, not the Charismatics, nor any fellow Biblical Christian who is the problem. You can't move forward if you're not unified and focused on the real enemy."

Citing Paul's letter to the Ephesians, the Rt. Rev. Ray Sutton, told deputies to the 16th Annual Assembly of Forward in Faith NA that we are already united by a common faith but we still have a responsibility to be unified.

Sutton, who holds a doctorate in church history and theology said, "We are living icons, refracting as images of the most high God. It is absurd to argue that there are no core Christian doctrines affecting Biblical moral and family life. The teaching of the ascent into the heavenly presence of the Triune family of God requires behavior that reflects God and His Bride of heaven."

"How can we fight to win in spiritual warfare if we're divided?"

Sutton blasted what he called the trivial pursuit of a shallow, baseless kind of unity so often trumpeted by the liberals. "They do the outrageously heretical and then tell us to concentrate on what we have in common, how it far outweighs what we don't have in common. They have taken the creeds and redefined, revised, and reworked them to the point of removing the uniqueness of the Triune God and Jesus Christ at their center."

The orthodox bishop said the revisionists had further corrupted the life of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church also confessed in the creeds by severing them from the morality of the Ten Commandments. "As a result, Christ is not the way. For them the creeds are no longer the unifying symbols of orthodoxy but heterodoxy."

Citing early Christian heresies - Arianism, Gnosticism and Nestorianism, Sutton ripped what he called "apostate revisionists" saying they no longer have one Lord the same way we do. "These ancient heresies provided a pluriform theological rationale for polytheism."

Sutton said revisionists were committing the same theological and moral fallacies of polytheistic ancient Israel.

"Israel's sin wasn't that she rejected Yahweh, it was that she wanted to reintroduce the worship of other local pagan, Canaanite gods."[But] false gods have false sacraments and false sacraments amount to sexual perversion. How dare we think our other theological concerns are more important than our common belief in the One, Triune Lord."

In a plea for unity, Sutton argued that we do not have different spiritual parents. "This is particularly true of those of us in the Anglican branch of the family. Go back far enough and you'll find that we have the same Anglican family lineage. We have differences and nuances but that's all they are. We have oneness by any standard in the history of Anglicanism; call it the Anglican formularies or the Lambeth Quadrilateral. To keep the true apostolic unity we already have we must come in a greater way of aligning ourselves."

Sutton said that the Network and the larger Anglican Communion offers a context in which this can be worked out. "Perhaps we have to start with a communion of communions. So let us join hands to keep the Biblical and Apostolic unity we already have."

END

[ahadams2]

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[TruthNtegrity]

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Bookmarking to get it higher in my comments list.

[LiteKeeper]

I have liked Ray Sutton for a long time...nice to see he is being granted an opportunity to speak to those who for so long (ECUSA, not this particular audience) branded him (the REC) as illegitimate, and not true Anglicans.