Thanks, Pilgrim. That was the best rant I've ever read
I am indeed too late. I suspected this all along, but it's difficult to connect with brethren of like mind and heart.
Perhaps the most toxic fault with Reformed churches is the belief that mainstream evangelistic methods and rationales are fine... demonstrating either a failure to appreciate the ramifications of (double) predestination, or a total disdain for it. I don't think anything apart from the doctrine of seeking (so ably expounded by the late Dr. Gerstner) is consistent with Dordt. Faulty evangelism poisons the source, allowing more tares to be sown among the wheat. These tares become the dominant members, and, in time, elders and pastors are drawn from them.
The obsession with peace and unity of the church is so rife that friendship with Rome is regarded as brotherly. Sadly, the Westminster Confession's identification of the office of the Pope as the Antichrist has been taken out of American versions; I don't think the Reformers were wrong on this one. But the floodgates have been opened, and for too long.
The peace that the modern church seeks is the peace of the graveyard.
