Many ministers, including Free Presbyterian Church ministers, may well have received this morning an email from Caroline Bradley, national representative of ‘Care for the Family’.
It is an invitation to become involved is a series of meetings, convened by organisations prepared to cooperate with error, and which are held in ecumenical churches or those sympathetic to Ecumenism.
The invitation is to be rejected and that for the following reasons.
1. The observations and objectives they set out to achieve are in and of themselves commendable but the methods employed are unscriptural.
These organisations claim to be opposed to the ‘secularisation’ within society, which is to the detriment to Bible principles. However, they are ill-informed as to God’s ordained means of accomplishing these objectives. They fail to see who and what is responsible for the digression away from the Bible, not just by society generally but by the mainline church in particular!
It was not the ‘Communist Party’ or the ‘Atheistic Society’ which initiated the modern trends that have taken the churches on a path back to Romanism and away from the fundamental truths of the Bible!
No, such trends began most openly within ‘Christendom’, as far back as the early years of the 20th century!
Ecumenism
Thus we may read of the beginnings of the ‘Ecumenical Movement’ in a Wikipedia article entitled, Ecumenism: “Ecumenism, alternatively spelled oecumenism) – also called interdenominationalism, or ecumenicalism – is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity.”
This is how it is classified in ‘What are Ecumenical Relations?’ — Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs, put out by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
The adjective ‘ecumenical’ is thus applied to any non-denominational or inter-denominational initiative which encourages greater cooperation and union among Christian denominations and churches.
It has been defined as, “Ecumenism is a movement towards the recovery of the unity of all believers in Christ, transcending differences of creed, ritual and policy, as well as interdenominational cooperation.”
Ecumenists cite John 17:20–23 (most erroneously – IF.) as the biblical grounds of striving for church unity, in which Jesus prays “may all be one” in order “that the world may know” and believe the Gospel message.
In 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Germanus V of Constantinople, wrote “a letter addressed ‘To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be’, urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a ‘League of Churches’, parallel to the newly founded League of Nations”.
In 1937, Christian leaders from mainstream Christian churches resolved to establish the World Council of Churches, to work for the cause of Christian unity; it today includes churches from most major traditions of Christianity as full members, including the Assyrian Church of the East, the Old Catholic Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the Anglican Communion, the Baptist World Alliance, the Mennonite churches, the World Methodist Council, the Moravian Church, the Pentecostal churches and the World Communion of Reformed Churches, as well as almost all jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church; the Roman Catholic Church participates as an observer, sending delegates to official gatherings.’
Thus began the latter-day amalgam of of all that is theologically unclean!
It is into the embrace of churches which are in step with this ecumenical heresy that those invited by Caroline Bradley’s email are enticed to yield!
2. These organisations, mentioned in the aforementioned email, would direct the unsuspecting to the very agency that is, and has, for many decades, been destroying the very moral and spiritual fabric which they are hoping to see strengthened and repaired.
They hope to combat ‘an under-fathered society, and . . . an under-fathered church.’
That is very true description of state of the nation today because the structure of marriage, that is ordained of God as the means of the propagation of humanity, has been destroyed by the ‘modernism’ in the pulpit and the abandoning of the truth that the Bible is ‘the only rule of faith and practice’!
This moral malaise is the direct result of the ever-increasing spiritual decline and departure within the ecumenical churches, the very location in which these organisations are holding their meetings!
Baptist Church
The fact that a Baptist church is one of the venues merely serves to show to where some Baptists are travelling and what it is some of them are prepared to embrace.
The introduction to one of these organisations may be seen on the website of Legacy, and is illustrative of the objectives and methods they employ.
There we read the following in the explanation as to the beginnings of this organisation.
“I decided to tell a few fathers just how significant their voice was in regard to their daughter’s or son’s faith… And they didn’t believe me. They replied with: ‘I don’t really have much influence, but I’ll always love them whatever decision they make.’
And, of course they will. But somewhere along the way, these fathers stopped believing that they were influential contributors to their children’s faith. Who made them believe this lie? Because as someone in youth ministry, I was seeing the opposite, that whatever happens in the home is the foundation of a life of faith.”
Please note what I have underlined.
The answer to that underlined question is simple. The ‘culprit’ is the very churches which led them astray and to which now they would gather people to hear their instructions which will, they say, ‘enable fathers to become disciple-makers.’
3. They make a fundamental error in that they are attempting to produce good within the very place that is the source of the sin they are combating!
Hear this question and note the answer..
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one,” Job 14:4.
This organisation is attempting to do that which God says is impossible.
One of the leading figures in the ‘Legacy’ organisation is Bishop Ken Clarke – Former Mission Director of SAMS UK & Ireland and Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh.
He is therefore an essential part of the oversight of one of the most ecumenical, modernistic and apostate denomination in the world.
Bishop Clarke is listed as ‘a patron of the Iona Institute in 2014.’ That Institute was founded by David Quinn, an Irish social and religious commentator. From 1996 to 2003, he was the editor of The Irish Catholic. The Iona Institute has been called ‘a (Roman) Catholic pressure group’.
The ‘Iona Institute’ has similar objectives to the ‘Care for the Family and Legacy’.
They are all part of the ‘modernistic’ approach to all things ‘Christian’. It is man’s specious philosophy they put forward, with a slight sugar coating of Christian terminology.
To the undiscerning, a casual glance seems to suggest that it is a ‘good thing’!
‘Take Heed’
It is of the essence of that spirit of deception which the Saviour said would precede His return.
“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many,” Matthew 24:4-5.
These deceivers will come claiming that their authority is of Christ and they shall thereby dupe ‘many’!
There are many today ready to heed the siren calls of these deceivers, far more than there are of those ready to believe, obey and abide by the Word of God.
Paul asks the question: “Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?” 2 Corinthians 10:7. To do so is to form a mistaken view of that looked upon.
The Saviour said of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:28. “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
These and other like organisations, with their outwardly plausible intentions, and equally plausible leaders, are only binding the blind and gullible to the latter-day ecumenical apostasy. They have chosen to operate within, and in full cooperation with, the modern mainline church denominations.
Such are, in truth, the source of the plagues which ‘’Exodus”, Legacy’ and ‘Care for the Family’ organisations claim to be seeking to combat!
Christian beware!!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
16th April 2025