Grodi2

Miles McKee Ministries

Box 353, Ponte Vedra Beach, Jacksonville, Florida 32004-0353

PO Box 8, New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland

Page 2 Grodi (by Miles McKee)

This is pitiful! Much as we appreciate and value many of the things John Calvin taught, Calvinism saves no one! The Great Commission was to go into the world and preach that Gospel not Calvinism! If Mr. Grodi knew the Gospel he could have told his parishioners to cast themselves, in simple faith, upon the Lord Jesus Christ and His doing and dying. Mr. Grodi could have told them that in Christ Jesus alone there is washing and cleansing from the filth of sin by His blood. He could have assured them that in Christ alone we are clothed with a righteousness, which allows us to appear before God fully, freely, and forever accepted. He could have declared that the salvation we need is finished, and complete in Christ (Ephesians 1:6; Colossians 2:10), and is received by faith alone. Mr. Grodi should have further warned them not to look to anything within themselves or in any church to help prepare them for death, for salvation is all in Christ.

Furthermore, Mr. Grodi would have done well to tell his anxious enquirers the same thing that the Rev. Dr Winslow told his. He said,

“Cast yourself, in childlike faith, upon that atonement - Christ dying for the ungodly, (Rom. 5:6) - and you are saved! Justification is a poor, law-condemned, self-condemned, self-destroyed sinner, wrapping himself by faith in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘which is unto all, and upon all them that believe,’ (Rom. 3:22). He, then, is justified, and is prepared to die, and he only, who casts from him the garment of his own righteousness, and runs into this blessed ‘City of Refuge’ - the Lord Jesus - and hides himself there from the ‘revenger of blood,’ exclaiming, in the language of triumphant faith, ‘There is NOW NO CONDEMNATION to them that are in Christ Jesus,' (Rom. 8:1). Look to Jesus, then, for a contrite heart -----look to Jesus for a clean heart-look to Jesus for a believing heart-----look to Jesus for a loving heart-----and Jesus will give you all. -----God is prepared to accept you in His blessed Son, and for His sake He will cast all your sins behind His back, and take you to glory when you die. Never was Jesus known to reject a poor sinner that came to Him empty and, with ‘nothing to pay.' God will glorify His free grace in your salvation, and will therefore save you, just as you are, ‘without money and without price,' (Isa. 65:1). ----- Cast yourself at the feet of Jesus, and if you perish, perish there! Oh no! perish you never will, for He has said, 'Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,' (John 6:37). 'Come unto ME,' (Matt. 11:28), is His blessed invitation ; let your reply be, ‘Lord, I come! I come! I come! I entwine my feeble, trembling arms of faith around Thy cross, around Thyself, and if I die, I will die, cleaving, clinging, looking unto Thee!' So act and believe, and you need not fear to die. Looking at the Saviour in the face, you can look at death in the face, exclaiming with good old Simeon, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,' (Luke 2:29). May we, through rich, free, and sovereign grace, meet in heaven, and unite together in exclaiming, ‘Worthy is the Lamb; for He was slain for us!” (Rev. 5:12). Rev. Dr Winslow (Quoted in, ‘The Blood of Jesus’, by Rev William Reid)

Mr. Grodi seems to have been devoid of Gospel understanding and truth. He never once indicates that at any time he has grasped the Gospel or that the Gospel has grasped him. His whole basis of following Jesus has been based on his subjective commitment and decision and learning a set of Reformed doctrines. Therefore, he eventually decided to stop masquerading as preacher of the Gospel and unmask himself as a Roman Catholic decisionist.

Mr. Grodi, instead of finding his answers in Christ and His Gospel, says:

“I was deeply unsettled by the knowledge that no matter how earnestly he may have thought he was predestined for heaven (it’s interesting that all who preach the doctrine of predestination firmly believe they themselves are one of the elect), and no matter how sincerely those around him believed he was, he may not have gone to heaven.”

Apart from the obvious instruction given by Peter that each one of us are to make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10), it seems that Mr. Grodi made the fatal error of reckoning his acceptance before God to be based upon his doctrine and theological system. He has since traded Reformed doctrines for Roman Catholic ones and somehow thinks that his Justification before God is now complete. He seems to have entirely missed the only one who can save, Jesus the Christ!

He tells us that he now, “found it harder to give clear, confident answers to the “Will my husband go to heaven?” kinds of questions my parishioners asked.” Notice how fast he is becoming like a priest. He feels he must be the one with all the answers. Instead of taking his people to the Scripture to discover the Gospel, Mr. Grodi sees nothing amiss when his people look to him as the arbiter of all truth in this matter of salvation. He then goes on to say,

“Every Protestant pastor I knew had a different set of criteria that he listed as “necessary” for salvation.”

Nonsense! What exaggerated and embellished twaddle! The only Bible believing ministers who are confused about salvation are those, who like Mr. Grodi, have rejected the Bible as their final authority in matters of faith and practice! He then goes on to say,

“As a Calvinist I believed that if one publicly accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior, one is saved by grace through faith.”

Mr. Grodi, where is the Scripture that says such nonsense? Jesus only saves publicly? Then Mr. Grodi was troubled when he considered the worldly, sinful lifestyles deceased members of his congregation had lived. Of course you know where this is leading. It is leading to the baseless and erroneous charge that Bible Believers are antinomian (against the law). Roman Catholics have always charged Bible believers with careless and unholy living because of holding to justification by grace through faith. But neither Reformed nor non-Reformed believers teach that believers can live like the devil! Mr. Grodi knows this! Mr. Grodi knows that Bible believers believe that good works are seen as a result and evidence of Salvation. In fact Luther’s friend Melanchthon said, “We are saved by faith alone but the faith which saves is never alone.” Roman Catholics on the other hand, are saved, they say, by their works which come from grace. According to their teaching, it is not the grace but the works which come from grace that save them! Thus they make a mock of Ephesians 2:8-9 which plainly states, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works lest any man should boast.”

Mr. Grodi then goes into a long discourse called, ‘Consider the sparrows” which climaxes by telling us how he received guidance from a sparrow evacuating its bowels on his head. Isn’t it wonderful to know that he was guided by falling and targeted excrement? I don’t joke he really believes this! When I read this I was reminded of an old Irish saying which goes like this, “Deep down he is very shallow!” Doubtless, Mr. Grodi rejoices that pigs don’t fly in Ohio or wherever it was he was living at the time.

But in spite of the best efforts of the birds of the air, Mr. Grodi still knew his situation was not right. He began to think that what he needed was a bigger church with a bigger budget and a bigger staff. As he says, “Surely, then I’d be happy.”--And by such a written admission we can see what is in this man’s heart! He is living for himself and for his happiness but not for the glory of God. So much for his attack on the poor flawed and fractured Bible Believers who can never have enough commitment to make real disciples for Christ. Here we see that it is Mr. Grodi himself who has the problem with discipleship. It is no wonder that Jesus taught us to ‘judge not’ lest we, as is evident in Mr. Grodi’s case, be found guilty of the very same things we judge others for.

So, now we find Mr. Grodi pastoring a “bigger-is-better” church. “I thought,” he tells us, “(this) would satisfy my restless heart.” But alas, no! The sheep of his pasture were backsliders in heart and his frustrations began to grow. What did he expect? Sheep have an inbuilt capacity to stray and do stupid things. But, Mr. Grodi no doubt felt that Calvin and his followers were responsible for this lack of commitment and spirituality and could lay no blame on indwelling sin which remains in the heart of every one who follows the Lord.

Next he gives us a most confused and illogical story of how certain liberal Bible believers ministers failed to follow the Scripture concerning addressing God as Father and were suggesting the use of “Mother” or some other such nonsense. He describes how he, there and then, became aware of the “anarchistic principle that lies at the center of Protestantism.” He explains:

“These liberals (grievously wrong as they were in their scheme to reduce God to the mere functions of “creator,” “redeemer,” and “sanctifier,” instead of the Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), were just being good Protestants. They were simply following the course of protest mapped out for them by their theological ancestors Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Reformers. The Reformation maxim of “I will not abide by a teaching unless I believe it is correct and biblical” was being invoked by these liberal Protestants in favor of their protest against masculine names for God.”

Where did they find anything in the Bible telling them to invoke God as Mother! Come on, Mr. Grodi, your logic is unintelligent and foolish. You say you defended the invocation of God as Father from the Bible----your opponents did not. Yet you say that, by not following the Bible, they were simply following the Bible believing maxim of only following teaching that can be established by the Bible. This is confusion twice confounded!

Furthermore, it is painfully obvious that these men, whom Grodi incorrectly states were following Reformation principles, were anti-Bible liberals. That they happened to be masquerading as Bible believing ministers ought not to call the Reformation into question. It’s incomprehensible! Why, when a bunch of imposters calling themselves Bible believers refuse the authority of Scripture does Mr. Grodi join a church that has little or no regard for the Scriptures? The Church of Rome equal devotion and reverence for Tradition as she has for Scripture, in her own words,

“As a result the [Roman Catholic] Church...does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” Paragraph 82 Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994)

Mr. Grodi would have done well to have obeyed the Bible and have had nothing to do with those Bible deniers who equally love their Tradition. He should have practiced the biblical doctrine of separation. Notice again how he is critical of those who do not take the Bible seriously, yet affords himself the luxury of ignoring the Bible’s admonition:

“Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:17-18.)

Living in such willful disobedience, it is no wonder he was so available to deception!

He then begins to feel convicted about ministering in a denomination, which advocated the murder of the unborn. It’s about time he’s asking himself this question. However, had he but understood ‘Biblical Separation’, he could not, in the first place, have been with any church who advocated the murder of babies.

He then tells us, “I knew I was leaving Presbyterianism but I had no idea which was the “right” denomination.”

The right denomination? He has embraced the error of the one true church. There are so many who claim to be the one true Church that it is tiresome to listen to them. I’d love to hear representatives from Rome, the Orthodox Church, The Church of Christ International and the United Pentecostal Church debate their presuppositions in a room. They all claim to be the one true church and tell us the ‘True Church’ has a geographic center. And, in a way, they are geographically correct. This is not to say that the true church is centered in Rome, or Moscow, or somewhere in the United States; the ‘True Church’ is centered in Jesus Christ. Wherever He is, there is the location of the true church.

But eventually, through Scott Hahn, further studies, and a lot of study, he came to the conclusion that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (justification by faith alone) were on very shaky biblical ground, and he decided to become a follower of the “infallible” Pope and his teaching power called, ‘magisterium’. They had the real truth and consistency of belief.

Of course, he doesn’t seem to consider that if the teaching of the Roman Church is infallible, that must mean that she has never changed her position on any matter. Yet, once upon a time they didn’t hold to the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven but now they do--that’s quite a change for men who always get it right!

Furthermore, if the Pope is infallible, then it stands to reason that all Popes must have been infallible. Yet in church history we discover that at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in A.D. 680-681, a Bishop of Rome, Pope Honorius, was condemned for having embraced and promoted heretical teachings. This pope had embraced and promoted the heresy that Christ had only one will, the divine. This error, properly known as montheletism, does violence to the dual nature of Christ in that it totally disregards the fact that, as the divine/human savior, Christ Jesus, had two wills. So did Pope Honorius speak infallibly on matters of faith? He should have done so, if the “successor to Peter” is infallible.

Furthermore, the Council of Trent condemned popes Innocent I and Galacius I. There goes apostolic succession out the window, never mind infallibility. Mr. Grodi’s search for a consistency of belief and a deposit of truth in the Roman communion can be found as easily as a blind man can find a black cat in a dark room.

Surely, if Papal Rome is the guardian of the truth and has such a stalwart record of consistency of belief, we should expect her to have been constant and unswerving in her doctrine of Papal infallibility. However, this nonsensical doctrine was not officially adopted until the First Vatican Counsel of 1870. It was an old idea, which had been resisted by, surprise, surprise, many of the popes. For example Pope “John XXII did not want to hear about his own infallibility, he viewed it an improper restriction of his rights as a sovereign, and in the bull Qui quorundam (1324) condemned the Franciscan doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil.” (How the Pope Became Infallible by Roman Catholic historian Bernard Hasler pages 36 and 37)

Why did such as Pope John XXII resist the idea of infallibility? Because they thought that the idea of papal infallibility could actually limit Papal power! Think about it, if infallibility was introduced, popes could not just run around the place overthrowing what other popes had decreed. And just who originally came up with the brainchild of papal infallibility? Again, surprise, surprise, it was the invention of one Peter Olivi, a Franciscan who was more than once accused of heresy. Olivi liked the idea of papal infallibility because he wanted to ensure that future popes would not overthrow a ruling, favorable to his view of poverty, made by Pope Nicholas III (1277-1280).

Yet Mr. Grodi seems to be beguiled as he appeals to an imaginary tradition of unwavering change.

Mr. Grodi goes on to drool on his great discovery that the Bible believers arguments against the primacy of Peter weren’t Biblical. As usual, this former Protestant glaringly advertises his ignorance of the Bible. He should have known these following scriptural reasons, which show beyond argument that the Primacy of Peter is just another invention in the long and damnable line of Papal fables.

Reason One: Christ taught that all the apostles were equal. Matthew 23:8, 'Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ; and ye are all brethren.” All brethren! That means they were all equal! But of course the disciples, like modern Romanists didn’t get it and actually competed with each other for ascendancy and pre-eminence. But just so that there should be no confusion concerning what he had taught, Jesus stepped in and said, 'Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them' ( Mark 10:43). 'But so shall it not be among you; but whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister' (Mark 10:44). How is it that Rome ignores these Scriptures and demands we believe that Peter was supreme?

Reason Two: Peter had every chance to tell us all about how he was the main man. After all, he wrote two epistles and is thought to have dictated Mark’s Gospel. But nowhere in his writings does he mention that he is the chief bishop. In fact, he says just the opposite when he writes, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 5:1). If Rome is right about him he should have written, “The elders among you I exhort, who am the vicar of Christ and his representative upon the earth.”

Reason Three: One does not send a pope to check out a situation! Yet Peter was sent by the other apostles to Samaria: “Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John.” (Acts 8:14) When is the last time you heard of the Cardinals sending the Pope to check whether or not there had been a move of the Spirit--or anything else for that matter?

Reason Four: A council of the apostles and brethren was held at Jerusalem (Acts 15:6-29) Peter was in attendance and spoke and yet everyone, including Peter, bowed to James’ ruling on that occasion. The thing to further notice is that, when they sent out a reply from the council, Peter again, was not given the Primacy. Note what the Bible says, “And they wrote letters by them after this manner; the apostles and elders and brethren send greeting”(Acts 15:23)

If Peter had been the Vicar of Christ, our Lord’s visible substitute on earth, then the whole Council of Jerusalem should have been condemned because (a) Peter was not given his due place and honor in that they followed James’ ruling, and (b) in the subsequent ruling there was no mention of Peter’s superior place. Is it any wonder that Rome refuses to take her doctrine from Scripture alone? She cannot afford to, as it exposes her as fraudulent and deceitful in her telling of history.

Reason Five: The apostle Paul would be very surprised to discover that Peter had somehow managed to usurp him as the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul relates how when, “James, Peter, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” (Galatians 2:9). Notice how Peter was to minister to the Jews (the circumcision). But Rome was a gentile church in a gentile city. What business, therefore, had Peter exercising supremacy there? None! Furthermore, Paul claims that it is he, not Peter who has the ‘care of all the churches’” (2 Corinthians 11:28); yet Rome claims this role for Peter and his successors. This claim is the kind of error, which happens when the Bible is willfully rejected as the final authority.

Reason Six: Galatians 2:9 says, “James, a pillar, Peter, the foundation and John, another pillar” Woops! Does it really say that? It should do so if Mr. Grodi is correct about the primacy of Peter. But I misquoted that Scripture. Here’s what it actually says, “James, Peter, and John, who seemed to be pillars.” Peter was a pillar, not the foundation.

Reason Seven: Paul withstood Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed (Galatians 2:11). Paul dare not have done this if Peter was the actual Vicar of Christ! And if Peter were the Vicar of Christ, he would have done nothing worthy of rebuke!

Reason Eight: When Paul lists the ascension gifts which the Lord gave to the Church in Ephesians 4:11, there is no mention of the role, primacy, or supremacy of Peter! Had the Holy Spirit known of the role of the Vicar of Christ, He would surely have mentioned it. If Rome is correct about Peter, Ephesians 4:11 should read, “And he gave the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome to be first, foremost and chief among you. He is the substitute for the Lord Jesus here on earth. As the prince of Apostles, he is the Holy Father, the way, the truth, and the life, the father of princes and kings and the Great High Priest (Supreme Pontiff) of the Universal Church.”

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