Men will arise, speaking perverse things...

While pursuing the M.Div. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I took four courses from Roger Nicole, including his seminar on the Atonement. Dr. Nicole was a feminist even then (1980-1983), and we had our arguments over his dismissal of Scripture's commands. Yet at that point his feminist commitments extended only to the Church, the advocacy of women pastors and elders, and many of us felt this advocacy was more a function of his baptistic polity and almost-denial of ordination than some deep ideological commitment to feminism. At the time he still did not equivocate on the command of God's Word that the husband is to be the head of the wife. But this inconsistency never led us to feel that Dr. Nicole was essentially stable on this doctrine. Which is greater, the Church or the home?

Skip forward seventeen years or so, to the 1998 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. There I was privileged to renew my relationship with Dr. Nicole. Imagine my lack of surprise upon finding out that Dr. Nicole had moved in his commitments--and not towards honoring God and His Word, but rather toward Eleanor Smeal, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, "The New York Times," Gilbert Bilezikian, Simone de Beauvoir, Wheaton College, Hillary Clinton, and "Christianity Today."

Dr. Nicole now denied the authority in marriage of the husband...

With love I told him how sorrowful I was at his departure from Scripture and Scripture's God. Dr. Nicole responded gleefully recounting to me how well he fit into his new seminary home, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, chortling, "They send all their women students to me to advise."

From the context in which Dr. Nicole brought up this matter, plus the chortling, there was no question how Dr. Nicole interpreted this action by the administration of Reformed Seminary: they were broadminded enough to allow Dr. Nicole to take his best shot at their women, seeing if he could seduce them away from God's Truth.

Now of course I don't mean for a second to say that any particular member of that administration, either then or now, would admit to saying or even thinking such things. But there's no question they knew Dr. Nicole's rejection of Scripture's teaching concerning the order of creation and its Divine application to the authority of men in the home and Church; no question Dr. Nicole is, and always has been, a fervent missionary of evangelical feminism; no question any non-comatose shepherd would realize, in assigning Dr. Nicole as their advisee, that the women under his care would be proselytized for evangelical feminism; and according to Dr. Nicole, no question that the administration of Reformed Seminary in Orlando went ahead and gave Dr. Nicole a captive audience for his soul-destroying work.

Maybe some think my words too strong, but I challenge them to come up with a better description of the impact feminism has on God's sheep. It's late and we must not continue to connive at this heresy, nor the work of false shepherds who promote it. And yes, I know personally what good scholars some of these men are. I've studied under Roger Nicole and Gordon Fee, and David Scholer was a prof at Gordon-Conwell during my time there. I think each of them a likable academic. But is it enough of a qualification to train the shepherds of God that a man is a likeable and gifted scholar?

I still love Dr. Nicole and am so grateful to him for the almost-endless lessons I learned from him during seminary. And I think he should be disciplined, starting with his removal from membership in the Evangelical Theological Society and moving to his removal from any faculty status at Reformed. He denies the plain meaning of Scripture and cannot hold to inerrancy. Yes, it seems wacko to claim that Mr. Inerrancy himself should be disciplined for denying inerrancy, but this has been my conviction for years, now.

And it is love--for Christ, for His Bride the Church, for the souls Dr. Nicole is leading astray, and for Dr. Nicole himself--that demands it.

Evangelicals must ask whether God gave the tool of discipline for the good of the Church, and if so, whether we are willing to use it? Officers of the Church today will be judged by the same criteria the Apostle Paul warned the elders of the church in Ephesus they would be judged by:

Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Acts 20:26-31)

For too long those who love Scripture's Truths concerning the meaning and purpose of sexuality have fought against the egalitarian ideologues with words and tools disproportionate to the evil those idolaters promote. It's all treated as an amicable, a collegial exchange. Relationships are rarely jeopardized. Livings remain secure. It's all so civil.

But church officers protect their reputations, relationships, and riches at the cost of the sheep thinking Christians of good conscience may differ over this matter, and that it's all a matter of personal opinion. Yet the egalitarians' fruit is rotten: divorce, sodomy, rebellion, fatherlessness, women warriors, elders boards that won't discipline, pastors without chests, gelded Bibles...

Good reader, how do you think the Apostle Paul would deal with men like Gilbert Bilezikian and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen today?