Objection 43

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

2 Corinthians 6:17 and Revelation 18:4, "come out from among them, and be ye separate"; "Come out of her, my people." God commands separation into the one true church.

Both texts command separation from idolatry and corruption, not from other believers. 2 Corinthians 6 names the antitheses: righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, the temple of God and idols. Paul is forbidding yoked fellowship with paganism, in a letter written to a church he never instructs to shun other churches; the same Paul spent his ministry knitting scattered congregations together with letters, messengers, and a famine collection. Revelation 18 summons God's people out of Babylon, and note the assumption inside the summons: "my people" are IN Babylon when called. God has children scattered inside corrupt systems, which is this document's thesis, not the attainment system's. The separation Scripture commands is from sin unto Christ; the separation the attainment system practices is from Christians unto an organization, and a movement that forbids its members the fellowship of other saints should read the charge Christ laid against those who "shut up the kingdom of heaven against men" (Matthew 23:13) and John's censure of Diotrephes, "who loveth to have the preeminence... neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church" (3 John 9-10). John's censure of Diotrephes shows that the impulse to fence the fellowship is as old as the church itself, and that Scripture records it in order to warn against it, not to commend it. Any system of fellowship, including the one defended in these pages, must be willing to stand beside 3 John 9-10 and be measured.