Question: ....Isn’t it about time for the critics to admit that the fruit of Promise Keepers is ...

Question: I have been involved in Promise Keepers now for four years. I have brought unsaved friends to stadium gatherings and have seen them get saved. I have seen marriages strengthened. Yet the criticism continues. Isn’t it about time for the critics to admit that the fruit of Promise Keepers is good and has stood the test of time and scrutiny?

Response: I rejoice that you have seen friends saved and marriages strengthened through Promise Keepers (PK). Others have told me the same, and I praise God for the good PK has done and the desire for that good which motivates its leaders. At the same time, however, there are grave problems that must be faced honestly.

Wasn’t the first Promise Keepers meeting held at the base of Mount Sinai when God gave the Ten Commandments and Israel promised to obey them? There was nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments. We, like Israel, are simply unable to keep them. How will seven more help? Who invented them? By what authority? PK presents them as the key to Christian unity and Christian living. Whence this new revelation?
PK literature repeatedly claims that

Christian growth “begins by making some promises...we intend to keep.” The Bible doesn’t say so, nor are these “new seven” even found in the Bible. Yet PK president Randy Phillips, in The Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, says, “These promises...are meant to guide us toward the life of Christ and to transform us within so that we might see transformation in our homes, among our friends, in our churches, and, ultimately, in our nation.” That’s a huge claim for promises that don’t even contain the essence of the gospel, much less doctrinal teaching upon which such a transformation could be based! If the Bible is sufficient, why do we need these new manmade rules that neither Christ nor Paul knew?

In the back of that book is a tear-out sheet to be filled in as a commitment “to live by those seven promises.” Isn’t this another form of Galatian legalism? Lives may be changed initially through these vows. But discouragement could also come from failure to live up to an unbiblical “commitment” made under great excitement at a rally.

Promise 5 is a pledge for men to go back and support their church. There are serious errors in many Protestant churches. Some are apostate. Yet PK tells men to support whatever church they may come from, no matter how heretical. Never are any errors pointed out or distinctions made; that would undermine the unbiblical “unity” PK fosters.

This promise to support whatever church a man attends applies equally to Roman Catholics. Promise 6 speaks of ignoring “denominational barriers” (including those between Catholics and evangelicals). When criticized for Catholic involvement, PK spokesmen have “explained” that Catholics are invited to attend in order to win them to Christ. That’s at best a half-truth.

The full truth is that from the very beginning Catholics have been embraced as Christians along with evangelicals. Roman Catholicism has been accepted as the true gospel, and the Roman Catholic Church has been fully supported. Our Sunday Visitor (a major Roman Catholic newspaper) reveals, “Promise Keeper founder Bill McCartney told Our Sunday Visitor recently that full Catholic participation was his intention from the start.” (Emphasis added.)

Full participation for Roman Catholics means there is no distinction between them and evangelicals. It was not out of conviction regarding anything wrong with Catholicism that McCartney (a lifelong active Catholic) began attending the Boulder Vineyard, but to please his family. Far from finding fault with Roman Catholicism, McCartney still supports it.

Bill McCartney claims that the church has never been united and that PK is uniting it. But Christ’s prayer in John 17 is for unity founded upon the Word, upon truth and the oneness of the Father and the Son. Christ’s prayer for unity was answered. All true Christians have always been united in the truth of God’s Word and in the Lord in Whom they believe and Whom they love and serve. We are never told to make unity (as PK is attempting through compromise) but to “keep the unity of the Spirit” (Eph:4:3Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
See All...). He is “the Spirit of truth” (Jn:14:17Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
See All...) who “leads into all truth” (Jn:16:13Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
See All...). PK attempts to create a false unity apart from truth, without facing the serious differences (even heresies) that divide (and rightly so) those who call themselves Christians.

In Seven Promises, Jack Hayford says that the heart of Christian unity is in “the Lord’s Table.” He adds, “Whether your tradition celebrates it as Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass, or the Lord’s Supper, we are all called to this centerpiece of Christian worship.” He can’t be that uninformed! Certainly McCartney knows that the Catholic Church forbids Protestants to partake of the Mass and Catholics to partake of Protestant communion. Therefore, there is no unity between Catholics and evangelicals in the practice of that which both claim expresses the very heart of Christianity! PK’s pretense of unity makes a mockery both of factual truth and of biblical truth.

Ironically, Rome’s exclusion of evangelicals from the Mass is found in Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism) and is reiterated by the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Promotion of the Unity of Christians. The latter declares that the Eucharist “signifies the fullness of profession of faith and ecclesial communion,” and since true unity is lacking with non-Catholics the Mass cannot be shared with them (Our Sunday Visitor, June 16, 1996, p. 16).

Why cannot Catholics and evangelicals partake together of what each considers to express the heart of Christianity? Simply because their beliefs regarding it and the gospel are irreconcilably opposed! Evangelicals believe that the bread and cup are symbols of Christ’s body and blood; Catholics believe that the wafer (each one of millions taken simultaneously) is literally the body and blood of Christ whole and entire, personality, soul, spirit, divinity. Evangelicals believe they are saved for eternity through receiving Christ once for all into their hearts by one act of faith; Catholics believe that by eating the wafer they are ingesting Christ into their stomachs, and the more often they do it the more installments of “grace” they receive, though they can never be assured of heaven.

We have quoted New York’s Cardinal O’Connor: “Church teaching is that I don’t know, at any given moment, what my eternal future will be. I can hope, pray, do my very best—but I still don’t know. Pope John Paul II doesn’t know absolutely that he will go to heaven, nor does Mother Teresa of Calcutta...” (The New York Times, Feb. 1, 1990, p. B4). (Then what hope is there for an ordinary Catholic?)

It couldn’t be clearer that Catholicism fully rejects Christ’s promise of eternal life as a free gift and the assurance He gives, and in His place purports to dispense an uncertain salvation of ritual and works through its sacraments. Yet PK—like Colson, Packer, Bright, Robertson and other signatories to “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium”—pretends that such vast differences in belief between evangelicals and Catholics either do not exist or are not significant!!

Evangelicals believe that Christ meant what He said when He cried in triumph, “It is finished!” For them, the communion service is a memorial of that finished trans- action. They take the bread and cup in remembrance of a finished work, Christ’s once-for-all-never-to-be-repeated sacrifice for our sins. Catholics, on the other hand, believe that “in the sacrifice of the Mass Our Lord is immolated” (Vatican II, Flannery, vol. 1, p. 102), that on their altars Christ “offers himself...as really as he did on Calvary” (Pocket Catholic Dictionary, p. 248). Anyone who denies that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice for sin is anathematized. Hear it from Catholicism’s highest authority: “If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God...let him be anathema. If anyone says that the sacrifice of the Mass is...a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...and ought not to be offered for...the dead...let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, Twenty-Second Session, chap. IX, Canons 1 and 3.) No wonder Catholics and evangelicals cannot partake together!

The difference in belief is so great and the doctrine so important that thousands have been burned at the stake for not accepting Rome’s gospel; and the more than 100 anathemas Rome pronounced against those who believe the true gospel have all been proposed again by Vatican II and still apply today. So there are men at a PK rally cheering Jesus side by side and being told that they are in unity when, in fact, the majority of them are anathema to large numbers of others and the truth is that they are not united at all in the gospel or in many other foundational Christian doctrines! And Catholics are told to go back and support their Church which has anathematized those whom they have hugged at the rallies and with whom they have professed unity! PK leaders surely know these facts, so their pretense at unity is deceitful.

I cannot escape the conclusion that there has been and still is a basic dishonesty at the very heart of PK which disturbs me greatly. PK finds no fault with the false gospel of Roman Catholicism but fully supports that apostate Church—yet hides that fact from evangelicals. That Catholics are told to go back and to support their church puts PK solidly in support of Roman Catholicism and all it stands for. Some of the men attending PK rallies could be wearing scapulars (as millions of Catholics do), which promise that those who die wearing them “shall not suffer eternal fire”—an abomination officially supported by Rome. They could be wearing medals for spiritual protection, praying the Rosary, praying to Mary or to some other “saint,” and looking to the Catholic Church (“outside of which there is no salvation”) for their salvation. They could be paying for Masses to shorten the time of suffering in purgatory for their deceased loved ones and hoping that Masses will be said for them after their death, etc., etc. None of these abominations which undermine the gospel is addressed by Promise Keepers, but men are told to go back to the Church which promotes these practices and to give it their wholehearted support. The Reformation is mocked!

PK leaders have avoided telling evangelicals (speakers, participants and others) the truth about PK’s relationship with Roman Catholicism. That truth, however, can no longer be hidden. It was revealed in the cover story of Our Sunday Visitor for July 20, 1997. (See “News Alerts” below.)

There is much other valid criticism of Promise Keepers: that it is a Vineyard movement; that it promotes humanistic concepts from psychology; that it has multimillions of dollars in its coffers as a result of the excessive fees it charges, etc. But its ecumenical refusal to face the serious heresies in apostate Protestant churches and its full support of Roman Catholicism should be sufficient to give pause to any who are involved. Is it not time for evangelicals who are asked to speak at PK rallies to confront PK leadership with the truth?