7.20.2018 THE DEATH OF A CHURCH by Carl McIntire (January 1967)

INTRODUCTION

*vii    with the adoption of the Confession of 1967,  the United Presbyterian Church will become an entirely different body. its foundations will have been changed. the message that it proclaims to the world will be a new one and the program that it outlines for itself in the so-called action sections of the new confession will make, of it primarily an instrument for social revolution.

the end of the road has been reached for what was once a great and glorious Reformed and
Calvinistic church. no longer can it be called a confessional church in the true and historic sense of this word.
it is a church which has cut itself loose from ts ancient moorings and will be drifting upon a broad sea without chart or compass, with an open acknowledgment that from time to time it will take soundings and chart a new course which will be the 'Confession of 1975' or the 'Confession of 1990'. as this new organic system moves alone it will be busy redefining, reinterpreting, restating what it learns out of the experience of its own travels. and entirely different kind of church has been here conceived and now organized. while men have been talking about revolution throughout the world - and in the United States they are concerned about revolution and the social system - a revolution has quietly been going on it which the church takes on a new form ahead of society itself.

the last turn in the road has been made and what was called the modernist-fundamentalist controversy is forever ended within the circle of this church, for the liberals and the modernists now have established their own doctrine in

*viii  the dominion which they rule, with any serious challenge no longer possible.

this is the first time that a major Protestant church in the Western world has been so bold as completely to reorganize  and reshape itself and its doctrine. the extent of all this can only be seen as one carefully examines the new confession itself and the new ordination vows which will determine  the relationship of the confession to the church and the church to the confession.

one does need to note the road along which the liberals have walked from the time they entered the church until they were able to write the new creed for the new church.

the fact that virtually all opposition to this new creed melted away in its final days, that even those who call themselves conservatives have announced that they 'can live with it', and some have even been so bold as to praise it,  indicates the ease with which men were led to accept verbal phrases which were given them to hold them within the circumference of the church while not in any way interfering with the purpose of the  new confession or the structure of the new church. many indeed are being deceived and will be tempted to accept  an easy road of surrender. but the most fundamental and basic realities of the Christian religion are at stake.
for 300 years the Westminster Confession of Faith was accepted, believed and the church was bound to it by the most honored vows before God.
this shall be no more.
the question that every Presbyterian and every Christian throughout the land must face is whether he can truly honor the name of the Lord and be a party to such a change and remain in fellowship with such a church.
it is this question that this study and analysis is designed to help God's people answer, this is a question that must be answered and answered with the help f God, in the light that he has given us in His Holy scriptures and with the peace and assurance of the Holy Spirit who speaks to the redeemed through the only infallible rule of faith and practice -the Holy Scriptures.

*1  CHAPTER 1 - The Ordination Vows

the place where this discussion must begin is with a consideration of ordination vows - the new vows that are now replacing the old vows that ministers, elders and deacons took at the time of their ordination. before we enter into a consideration of the Confession of 1967 itself it must be recognized that, no matter what the confession may have in it, the relationship which that confession has to   the church is determined by the vows and the terms of those vows.

the new vows that are replacing the old ones enable us to see immediately the broad sweep of the revolutionary change that is taking place. these vows do 2 great things. first, they abandon the Scriptures as the infallible Word of god and second, they abandon the system of doctrine that the Holy Scriptures teach.
in recent years the ordination of a minister or an elder or a deacon has not had the importance and the honor in the life of the church that it originally had and this trend in itself has contributed to the state we have reached in this day when vows can be changed without giving them too much consideration.

an entire chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith is entitled,  'Of Lawful Oaths and Vows'.  in regard to a vow it states:  'A vow is of the like nature with a promissory oath and ought to be made with the like religious care and to be performed with the like faithfulness. it is not to be made to any creature, but to God alone: and, that it may be accepted, it is to be made voluntarily: out of faith and conscience of duty; in way of thankfulness for mercy received; or for obtaining of what we want: whereby we more strictly bind ourselves to necessary duties; or to other things, so far and so long as they may fitly conduce thereunto.

we are familiar with marriage vows and oaths that are taken by witnesses in court, but the vows that are made by ministers and elders in the church bind them under God in the most direct and solemn way to the ministry and witness of the church. they are designed to guarantee that the church's witness will remain from generation to generation the same. to violate these vows is sin and in this connection paragraph III of this chapter of the Westminster Confession on oaths and vows is of great significance: 'whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider  the weightiness of so solemn at act and therein to avouch nothing but what he is fully persuaded is the truth. neither may any man bind himself by oath to any thing but what  is good and just and what he believeth so to be and what he is able and resolved to perform.
it is in the light of this teaching that the old vows that are now being cast aside are so significant the most important of all the vows of the Westminster Confession is,
'Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?
had all the ministers through the years believed in all honesty what this vow requires, there never would have been  a movement In the church through the years that we shall discuss as we move along in this presentation, the unbelief that has brought about this condition, that made men take their ordination vows, as it was said, with their fingers crossed and which Time magazine in its report on the new confession said would relieve ministers from a schizophrenic experience in pledging that which they knew they did not believe.

*3  the second ordination vow,  which had to be rejected for the same reasons, reads,
'Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?
long ago many laid aside the idea that there was any such thing as a system of doctrine presented in total compass of the Holy Scriptures. an entirely different concept of the development of the Bible and of the history of the experience of the Children of Israel has been imposed upon the Bible and upon the church. we no longer have here a revelation of the one true and living God, who has indeed revealed for us His own self and given to us the knowledge that we need concerning Him,  but we have an evolutionary development of the experience of a nomadic people who progressed from stage to stage in their understanding of what they considered to be religious and spiritual and God.


these 2 vows no longer could be honestly subscribed to and, as the larger number of ministers in the church entered that category, naturally it was the desire that they be relieved from this contradiction and embarrassment to their conscience. here we may observe, in accordance with what we  pointed out in the introduction, that a church built upon the belief that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and that there is a system of doctrine contained in the Holy Scriptures is an entirely different church from an organization that rejects these ideas and seeks to build its ministry on another basis entirely.

these 2 ordination vows do not fit the new confession and the new confession does not fit them. either way one looks at it, the vows had to be dispensed with. let us look  now at the vows that take their place.
the one relative to the Scriptures reads:  'Do you accept the Scriptures of the Lord and New Testaments to be the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church catholic and by the Holy Spirit God's word to you?
the first radical change is that the Scriptures are no longer a rule of faith and practice
and second, the Scripture are no longer infallible for us all

*4   regardless of what we may think about them. they are only a 'unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church catholic'.  thus whatever one may think about the Scriptures they are related only to Christ and can no longer be the rule of faith and practice for the church of Christ and the people of God. the word 'unique',  of course, is rather vague and general. the word 'authoritative'  can refer to many things - law books, dictionaries, texts used in schools, etc. these phrase, however, whatever they may mean, do not describe a Book which is infallible, inspired by the Holy Ghost, inerrant and the divine revelation that God has given to man.

moreover, the word 'belief' is removed entirely and we have the word 'accept' in its place. it is clear at this point that there could be a wide variety of opinions within  the church as to just what constitutes the 'unique' witness of the 'authoritative' witness, and a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints could be manifest in the church concerning the person, the work and the ministry of Jesus Christ. this is exactly the case, as we shall see when we come to the section dealing with Jesus Christ in our study of the new confession itself, especially when we look at the deliberate action in leaving out any reference to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. 
the next phrase in the question,  'And by the Holy Spirit God's word to you',  leaves the entire situation in most uncertain position. what is it in the Holy Scripture s that is 'god's word to yu'? it is clear that it is not the Holy Scriptures themselves which are accepted as God's word to you. it is only the unique and authoritative wetness to Jesus Christ that one may see in these Scriptures that would be God's word to you. in other words, every single individual may find a different word, or there may be large groups that subscribe to different words.
that the reference to the 'word' in no way means all of the Scriptures is clear in that the word is spelled with a small 'w' and this is in direct contrast to the use of the capital 'W' in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which

*5  is spelled out in such detail in Chapter I,  'Of the Holy Scriptures'.  no longer can the church be united as to what is the Word of God. it differs according to each man, to each preacher. no longer can any particular minister under such vows be held to account for his faith in the Holy Scriptures. that period in church history has passed so far  as the Presbyterians in the United Church are concerned.

a church built upon this kind of vow in relationship to this 'word (small 'w') as it relates to each separate and individual minister is an entirely different church from the one built upon the original and historic vow, which declares that the Holy Scriptures, for Genesis to Revelation written, are  indeed inspired of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice. whether one believes or does not believe, whether one accepts or does not accept the Scriptures stand objectively in all reality as a special divine revelation from the true and the living God. but under the new wow. the work of the Holy Spirit was not evidenced in the wring  of the Book in which the written words were indeed the words of God, but now the Holy Spirit is only evidenced - and a strange Spirit He is indeed - when he reveals a little 'word' to the preacher from this book. it is at this point that a great chasm has been created between the church under the Westminster confession and the church which now has another confession and another set of vows, as they relate to these 2 main considerations.

the second vow, the one that takes the place of 'the system of doctrine',  reads as follows:  'Will you perform the duties of a minister of the gospel in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of the Scriptures, ans under the continuing instruction and guidance of the confessions of this Church.

her are questions that arise:  who is this Jesus Christ who is now to be obeyed?
is He the  Christ reveled to us in infallible Scriptures,  who would indeed be the one and the same?
Or is He the Christ who is reconstructed by each individual man as he finds the Holy spirit speaking God's 'word' to Him?
is He the Jesus, the social reformer

*6  the leader of the new revolution, the one who is out in the world of social strife, bring in the kingdom of God in the new society?
just who is this Christ, and who is going to define Him for each minister?

we shall see when we get into the study of the confession that the hew terminology which they say we must have to express these ideas of the 20th century is of such a nature that it may be satisfying to every minister ,  even though his concepts and ideas concerning Jesus may be different from those of his fellows. it is this broad, vague, generalizing type of thinking that is necessary to cover up the contradictions and especially the lack of true faith in the Christ of the Holy Scriptures.

what is this 'authority of the Scriptures' that is mentioned in the second question?  since the Scriptures are only accepted as being 'the unique and authoritative witness of Jesus Christ', what then under this vow constitutes the 'authority of the Scriptures'? again we are confronted with the fact that the nature of this authority, the extent of this authority and the meaning of this authority are left to each minister to decide for himself, for it is nowhere confessed or declared in the new confession, while according to the old Westminster Confession the Scriptures were inspired of God, the infallible authority and were to e received not because of 'the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God,  (who is truth itself) the  author thereof'. thus we have two different and widely separated vies as to what constitutes the authority of the Scriptures.
third, let us ask,  What constitutes the 'continuing instruction and guidance of the confessions of this Church'?  it is nice indeed to be instructed by them, but these confessions which have been added to what they call the gook of confessions are not binding upon the church. they may give some guidance to a minister even though they are contradictory in some places, but they are not in any way to be considered as an expression of the system of doctrine wet forth in the Holy Scriptures. that is gone from the church.

*7  here again we are confronted with this strange complex of semantics. it sounds good. unless this vow is set alongside of the vow which it replaces and unless one recognize what is meant by the 'system of doctrine', the glorious deposit of revelation which gives to us all that God has been pleased to real and which we would never have known unless God had given it to us, he simply is misled. the general ignorance that prevails in the church concerning these mattes is a great assistance to the revolution that has now taken place.
there are other questions:  what are the duties of a minister in obedience to Jesus Christ?  they are nowhere defined or described and each man, therefore, in a subjective manner, is to determine these things for himself according to the Christ whom he has found or decided that he can serve in those portions of the Scriptures that he is ready to accept.

the unity of the church in the truth, the oneness of the church in Christ, have here been forever destroyed. they may talk of unity, they may speak of oneness, but it is only a verbal phenomenon because there are too many contradicting christs who are being followed by the company that now calls itself United Presbyterians under the new Confession of 1967.

these new ordination vows are a formula for inclusivism. there is a design here to give every man comfort in his unbelief or the measure of subscription which he feels that he may be able to give. no longer do we have a written creed where words mean exactly what they are generally understood to mean. unbelief has really wrought mischief in this church.

in Chapter XXII of the Westminster Confession,  'Of Lawful oaths and Vows',  we are told, 'An oath is to be taken in the plain and common sense of the words, without equivocation or mental reservation'. 
the vows of the new confession allow for all manner of equivocation
(def - to use ambiguous or unclear expressions, usually to avoid commitment or in order to mislead; prevaricate (speak falsely or misleadingly) or hedge)
and for a great many mental reservations.  now the liberals may be comfortable in their varying degrees

*8  of unbelief and opinions. the new vows encompass them all.

instead of going out and organizing a new church with  an entirely new set of ordination vows and a new confession and building that church from the ground up. a group of liberals or modernists as they have been called, infiltrated the church, carried on a campaign through the years which enlarged their company and brought about within the circumference of the church an entirely changed attitude toward the Bible, toward Jesus Christ and toward the doctrines. they, therefore, have been instrumental in changing the doctrines, changing the ordination vows, changing Jesus Christ, the Head of the church. they have done a thorough and complete job and those who originally were in the church and had a witness faithful to  the Scriptures and to the Christ of the Bible have found themselves either outside of the church or having the entire church changed so that they could not honestly remain in it and be true to the Christ of the Scriptures and to their confession that the Bible is indeed the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
thus instead of the liberals starting a church and building from the beginning, they have captured the old church,  made it over into a house of their own liking and those who have every rightful claim to its heritage and its institutions and wealth are forced in conscience and obedience to the Christ of the Scriptures to go out and start a new church or a continuing church with the  old confession and the old ordination vows.
this is revolution and the strategy, we may say, that has been so successful in the ecclesiastical world is now being carried out in the political world, as the socialists and Communists move in to destroy free societies and the right and the place of the individual in those societies to e a good steward and to worship the living God. there are indeed parallels between the  ecclesiastical struggle that has resulted in victory for the liberals and the modernists, and the political struggle in which the  Communists and the socialists are moving rapidly toward a victorious conquest.

*9  and even the new Confession of 1967 in its action provisions is designed to help the cause of world-wide socialism as we shall see when  we discuss that section of the new confession.

ordination vows also involve a contract. by means of vows one generation passes on to the next generation the testimony of its faith and a church which they have built and maintained. by means of vows people give their money and leave their legacies to a church, believing that the faith is protected and that their means will advance the faith in which they have believed and which they have sought to honor with their lives when they wee on the earth serving the Lord. this great contract is now broken.
there is a proper sense in which all the property of the Unite Presbyterian Church, built and gathered under the ordination vows which committed the church to the Bible as the infallible Word of God and to a system of doctrine, properly and rightfully belongs to that element which still professes the same faith. why should the unbelievers and the  modernists be allowed to take possession of all this wealth and use it now for the building of an entirely different kind of church and with an entirely different goal and program?
at this point there will develop a great deal of confusion. it is inherent in the situation that has been produced.
*will all the ministers of the church be required to take the new ordination vows?and
*can the ministers who have taken the older set of vows be required now to take the new set of vows?
*are the vows under which they were ordained and made ministers now to be formally abandoned and a new set taken by them?  or
*will these new vows be taken only by the clergymen who enter the denomination after 1967?
*should not all the ministers of the church be bound by the same set of vows or
*will it take a number of years until all those who took the old vows have passed on before the church will be united in its allegiance to the present vows of the 1967 reorganization?
*will the action of the General Assembly in finally amending the constitution and formally instituting the new vows and the new

*10  creed automatically men that all are under the new whether they take it verbally or not?
*just how is this to be implemented?

a still more serious question attends this condition -
the ordination question that asks that the ministers find continuing instruction and guidance from the confessions of this church is an open-ended vow.everyone  is here promising that he will also find instruction and guidance out of the confession of 1970 or 1990, if he lives that long and the church restates its faith as it has promised as a part of its growing and expanding experience as outlined in the Confession of 1967. in this vow ministers are promising that they will take guidance and instruction from something that does not exist and that they themselves have never even had an opportunity to study.
men, of course, have been living under the Westminster Confession and not believing it and if conscience has troubled them from time to time, they will not have too much difficulty with the varying shades that may be manifest in such problems as these which are now being raised. but men who truly believe the Bible to be the Word of God and still confess that there is a revealed system of doctrine -holy, clean, pure and righteous - are the men who will indeed find themselves in the greatest of difficulty before God. even the chapter of the Westminster Confession on oaths and vows contains in it a section which can be most uncomfortable:  'no man may vow to do any thing forbidden in the  Word of God, or what would hinder any duty therein commanded, or which is not in his own power and for the performance whereof he hath no promise or ability from God. in which respects, popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty and regular obedience, are so far from being  degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares , in which no man may entangle himself'. yet, here they are entangled in a vow that commits them to future confessions as yet unknown, because the church decides to change so as to need a Confession of 1990.

are these new vows, therefore, not in this category of

*11  being superstitious and sinful snares?
*who can a man who truly believes the 2 vows that are being rejected subscribe to the 2 new vows that are supposed to take their place?
*if the first two are honorable and true and have been taken before God, how an they be laid aside by honest men who truly believe what they vowed and confessed that they believed?
*can the General Assembly impose by these new vows this unbelief upon all the ministers of the church?

*where is the man who will arise and say that he cannot conscientiously take these new vows since he is already committed to the original ones and he still believes them to be true?
*is there any action anywhere that discharges him from the obligations he took before God when he made those vows?
at this point we run into great questions indeed concerning morality and righteousness and truth and honor before God, as men believe God and in doing so believe that he has given us an infallible and inerrant Word which is the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. if the church were not being changed there would be no need for new vows.
before we move on, there is still another factor that presents itself in relationship  to these vows which is of the greatest moment. there  are several vows that are not changed. they are continued.  these are vows that relate to the church, not to the Bible or to the system of doctrine. her are two that belong together.
'do you approve of the government and discipline of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America?
'do you promise subjection to your brethren in the Lord?

these vows have a long history within he  church and during the trials of the members of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in the 1930s they came to have an entirely different meaning and  and they gave o the church authority over men's conscience which has now been established in the law of the church...
approving of the government and discipline of the

*12  church gave the General Assembly the right to define an offense and to order ministers to be put on trial. since the Bible has now been removed as the only infallible rule of faith and practice,  the church rises in its authority to be the poser that will preserve its unity and its discipline. when once the authority of Scripture as an infallible rule is laid aside, the authority of the church arises with greater sanctity.  indeed the church usurps power for itself in virtue of its own authority - power which in the Scriptures belongs only to the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, and which must be administered in accordance with the infallible revelation of the Holy Scriptures. Historically , the power of the church has only been ministerial and declarative, but now, in the process of usurpation and centralization of power in the church by the General Assembly which has been evolving in this century, the church speaks more in her own name and her word is church law.

subjection to your 'brethren in the Lord',  which one always thought meant subjection to your brethren as long as they counseled yo in accordance with the  Word of God , was interpreted in the Independent Board Mandate of 1934 and the trials which followed to mean that you had to be in subjection to your brethren when they told you to do anything because they were in the Lord in that command, whether you accepted it or not. this made the majority in an assembly lord over men's consciences. subjection to your brethren in the Lord involved a blind obedience to what the General assembly commanded men to do. this is exactly what happens when church break away from the authority - the infallible authority - of the Holy Scriptures. the new ordination vows have in them, of course, this shift. one can see it there when he studies the developments of these past 3 decades. but all of this, we may say, is shifting the church over into a realm and a concept of authority that is more akin to that which had long been established in the roman Catholic hierarchy. in a genuine and true sense the Protestant Reformation at this point is rejected as it relates to the submission of the church to the infallible rule of the Holy Scriptures. and now the church

*13  arises in her power and glory as she restates and reinterprets her faith for different periods, out of different experiences, to find in herself a glory which has come out of her mind and her leadership rather than out of the Holy Scriptures . indeed, the Scriptures tell us that no flesh is to glory in His presence.
this major shift in power prepares the church for ultimate reunion with the Roman Catholic Church. church power is now supreme, above the Scriptures, rather than the Scriptures being above the churches.

CHAPTER 2 -  The Holy Scriptures

*14  'The Scriptures...are... the words of men....' this is the heart of the issue of the new confession as it relates to the Bible. thus, as far as the Bible is concerned, according to this 1967 confession, we are dealing only with the words of men, while in the Westminster Confession we are dealing specifically with 'the Word of God'.  Chapter I of the Westminster Confession, upon which the entire Confession is built, is entitled, 'Of the Holy Scriptures'.
this difference, 'the words of men' versus 'the Word of God',  is the reason for the new confession. the church and its leaders had given up this faith and the truth based on it. 
everything in the new confession is related to the rejection  of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only infallible  rule of faith and practice. this is unbelief and shrewd unbelief has dictated the new confession.
the tactic which is employed is the use of Biblical words and Scriptural terminology so that the ordinary Christian may not detect the basic change. when, however, the strategy is exposed and the differences are defined, the truth is discernible.

already we have reported that at the meeting of the General assembly in Boston, in 1966, virtually all opposition to the new creed melted away. it was left, however, to a Presbyterian lay Committee, Inc,. 200 fifth Ave,. New York City, to alert the entire nation by way of a major advertising campaign in the newspapers of the land to this unbelief and deceptive tactics.

the ad said:  'As often happens with the written efforts

*15  of committees, the resulting product is so full of compromises, concessions, contradictions and obscure sentences that it promotes serious disagreements in the way it is interpreted and applied.

far more serious, however, is the radical nature of some of he proposals that shatter the very foundation of our faith....
did you realize that the Bible will no longer be considered as the inspired and infallible word of God?...
then the ad expresses the simple faith which is in the hearts of true believers and certainly among these laymen:
the Bible contains over 3,000 references to 'the word of God' as put into the mouths of the Prophets. Christ himself accepted the revelations of the Prophets as the true Word of God and Christ, being Divine, could not have made a mistake.
are you willing to give up your belief in the Bible as the true and infallible Word of God?  are the Scriptures a divine guide or is the Bible a human and, therefore, unreliable document?

the Rev. Theophilus M. Taylor, secretary of the General Council of the United Presbyterian Church, issued a statement concerning the December 27, 1966,  advertisement of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc.,  in which he actually admits the main point that they have sought to establish.  Dr. Taylor said:  'the sponsors of the advertisement have at least made clear their fundamental objections....they choose to ignore the obvious fact, which is true of all human literature including the bible, that the words and thoughts of all human authors are inevitably conditioned by the times in which they live'. thus he includes the Bible in 'all human literature' and with 'all human authors' and rejects the divine nature of the Holy scriptures and their inspiration by the Holy Ghost.

he obviously rejects the claims of Christ,  'Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven' (Psalm 119.89) and 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away'. Matt. 24.35  What Christ said about Heaven and hell were in no way conditioned by the times

*16  in which He lived, for He insisted,  'if I  have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?  John 3.12

Dr. Taylor insists that on this point the laymen are still fighting a battle that was lost a full century ago when still fighting a battle that was lost a full century ago when most American theological schools of whatever denominational or confessional persuasion recognized the necessity of teaching the grammatico-historical method of interpretation of the Scriptures. this by no means denies that Christians have historically believed that they hear the voice of God in the Bible' but whatever this 'voice' maybe for Dr. Taylor, as represented in the new confession, it is not the voice which is speaking in divinely inspired and infallible words. the God who speaks with certain and infallible words is not the god whose voice is heard in a book of errors and human fallibility. and to claim, as Dr. Taylor does, that this voice, whatever it may be in the twentieth century, is what the church has always recognized and believed, is indeed dishonest. the laymen see the deception of such a claim.

the Bible has universally been accepted in the Christian church, until these latter years as the infallible, inerrant Word of God. it is inspired of God. the new confession refects this. it is from the Scriptures themselves that there has come the knowledge of this inspiration and the truth that they are infallible  the Westminster Confession summarizes and speaks of these excellencies - the unity of the plan of redemption, the consent of all the parts - all of which we are told abundantly evidence it to be the Word of God. 
the Apostle Paul insisted that 'holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost'. II Pet. 1.21 Peter insists that we have 'a more sure word of prophecy '  II Pet 1.19,  and concerning his own writing he said

*17  'Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. for we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. for he received from God the Rather honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory,  this is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. and this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount. we have also a more sure word of prophecy...II Pet. 1.15-9 and then he adds, 'fo the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:  but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost'. v.21

the testimony of the risen Christ to the Scriptures, however, has been the delight of the people of god. he said 'He that loveth Me not keepeth not my  sayings:  and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent me. John 14.24 this was His emphasis, 'If a man love me, he will keep my words' John 14.23 concerning the Scriptures He said, 'they are they which testify of me. John 5.39 and He said to the unbelieving Jews,  'For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me:  for he wrote of me. but if ye believe no his writings, how shall ye believe my words?  John 5.46'7 when He came to deal with Satan in the mountain  of temptation our Saviour used the words 'It is written', 'it is written' and He took His text from Moses. he was emphatic, 'The scripture cannot be broken. John 10.35
the Gospel according to Luke in chapter 24 records the testimony of our Saviour, as he gave i first to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus,  and second, to His disciples when He appeared in their presence.
to the 2 he said:  'o fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself'. Luke 24.25-7

*18  His words to the disciples were:  'These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets  and in the psalms, concerning Me. then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures and said unto them, Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sis should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. and ye are witnesses of these things.  Luke 24.44-8
nowhere in the new confession is the testimony of Christ  to the Holy Scriptures accredited or mentioned. the new chapter which deals with Jesus Christ, that the Christ of the new confession  is an entirely different person, with entirely different mission, from the one offered to us in the Holy Scriptures.
in the Westminster Confession, the first chapter deals with 'Of the Holy Scripture' and everything is built upon the Scriptures. the ministry of the church is to declare what the Holy Scriptures themselves teach and all doctrine is obtained out of the Scriptures.

in the new confession the section dealing with 'The Bible' is at the very end of Part I, which is headed, 'God's Work of Reconciliation'. the Bible now comes last in the schedule of consideration and it is not difficult to see why the Bible is placed last. it is this Book that has produced the difficulties and the problems that these clerics face and  that they now have sought to resolve in their won thinking by an entirely different approach to the Christian religion .  they must write a confession that gets around and away from the Bible.

there are only 4 paragraphs in the section dealing with the Bible and it is the third one, consisting of  five sentences, that describes best the new attitude toward the Holy Scriptures. let us discuss these 5 sentences separately and in order.

*19  1.The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of it witness to god's work of reconciliation in Christ'.

this indeed is an entirely different approach and concept from that which the church has previously had in dealing with the Scriptures. The Shorter Catechism asks, 'what do the Scriptures principally teach? and answers, 'The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe, concerning God and what duty god requires of man.  yet, according to this new approach, We are to decide what God's work of reconciliation in Christ is and then from this vantage point interpret everything else in the Scriptures. the Scriptures are judged by the 1967 church's concept of its message, not the church of 1967 judged by the Holy Scriptures infallible.
at the close of the preface to the new confession we are told, 'accordingly this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme'. the theme is 'reconciliation'. those who designed this confession with this orientation said to the second sentence of the Confession,  'In every age the church has expressed  its witness in words and deeds as the need of the time required'. this need now, according to their appraisal, is reconciliation, and this explains the emphasis upon the social, political, economic and the final action section of the confession, which is Part II, 'The Ministry of Reconciliation'. here are raised questions concerning the church, a world church; concerning the pagan religions and syncretism;  and then certain questions that we shall develop  -reconciliation in society, which deals with civil rights, poverty, peace, sex and the adjustments necessary for rapprochement with the Communist world. 
as one studies the total confession in the context in which it is written, it is apparent that it has been the desire of the part of men to accomplish certain things primarily in society, which has determined this approach. indeed we may very frankly that here is on approach and a confession that is being imposed upon the bible, a bible which they do not accept as God's infallible rule of faith and practice. instead of the Bible speaking for itself  and determining the doctrine and giving men the faith that they

*20  must preach and believe, the opposite approach is made. men come with the program that they themselves feel is the needed 'present witness' of the church 'to God's grace in Jesus Christ' and this is foisted upon the old Book. God's work of reconciliation in Christ has expanded and broadened far beyond the meaning and purpose of the cross on which Christ was crucified. i shall discuss this in the next chapter. the truth of what i am seeking her to point out, however, unfolds so naturally as we consider this section sentence by sentence.
2.  The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written'. 
our Saviour, however, as i have just quoted above from Luke, indicated that the Scriptures were given to testify of Him. Moses, he insisted, wrote of Him. the language of the Scriptures could hardly be conditioned by the thought forms and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written when they were specifically written to reveal and testify to a Christ who in the fullness of time would come to earth and literally fulfill the predictions that were made concerning Him. the truth is that they were conditioned, as they were written by the Holy Spirit, that they were indeed the words of God and their language was so designed in the use that the Spirit of God made of it as to be understood by men of all ages; yea, even the wayfaring man though he be a fool could not err therein.
psalm 22, written by David 1000 years before Christ was crucified, describes the death of Christ in minute detail and reports His resurrection from the dead. the Old Testament saints were saved by the same kind of faith as the New Testament saints as they looked forward to the coming of Christ and His death and resurrection. such prophecies which abound in the Scriptures and which have been literally fulfilled and some of which are yet to be literally fulfilled hardly can be classified as 'thought forms,  and literary fashions of the places and times in which they  were written'. just plain, Satanic-inspired unbelief in the

*21  highest circles of the Presbyterian Church have penned these miserable words.

the writers of this confession have introduced at this point a view of guidance by the Holy Spirit which is entirely different from that which the Bible itself teaches concerning the work of the Holy Spirit in dealing with the Holy Scriptures. it is perfectly obvious that in  the new confession the guidance of the Holy Spirit  only produced the words of God because of the Holy Spirit. thus we read,  'The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy spirit, are nevertheless...' something was wrong with the Holy Spirit at this point - he did not produce the Words of God!  he was content at this point simply to have a record that was 'words of men' and whatever His guidance ma have been, it was not sufficient to give a record that was inspired of God.  one sees how carefully this language has been chosen. how different the situation would have been had it read, 'the Scriptures, given under the inspiration of the Holy spirit, are therefore the Words of God...' it is this position and belief, so clearly manifest at this point, from which the new confession was actually designed to remove the church. thus we are ready for the third sentence and it progresses naturally in this area of unbelief.

3. they reflect views of life, history and the cosmos which were then current.

this directs us to the early chapters of Genesis where we have the description of the cosmos. the authors of the new confession feel that the views of the cosmos then. the Genesis account of creation, for example,  the alleged differences and contradictions between the account of Genesis i and Genesis 2, enter into this appraisal. in fact, this is the basis for the whole appeal to science and the knowledge of man as of the present and the relegating of the Genesis report to the realm of myth, fable, parable, allegory. 'In the beginning God created the heaven and he earth' Genesis 1.1 is beyond science to testify to and 'all things were

*22  made by Him' John 1.3 has to e a statement of revelation and nothing else.

the order of these sentences as they build up in this paragraph is significant. for the next one follows naturally and is a fuller explanation of what produced this attitude toward the cosmos and the views of life and history.
4. 'the church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding.
it is this so-called literary and historical understanding which is the destructive higher criticism, which rejects 'special revelation'. this took shape in the well-known Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis.  it is this which is at the basis of all the current attack upon the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament - the so-called documentary hypothesis in which various authors are recognized as having a part in the writing of Genesis and the Pentateuch and with  the complete redating of all these Scriptural writings. Thus we are told, on the basis of literary and historical understanding, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; David did not write his psalms; there were a number of Isaiahs who put the Book of Isaiah together and Daniel, of course could not have written his prophecy.

these are the matters which in recent years have been introduced even into the Sunday school publications, in the 'New Curriculum'. First, this unbelief entered the seminary - and we shall see the effect of this in the trial  of Charles Briggs (Chapter 15); then into the colleges, the pulpits;  and the effort to bring it down to the pews finally took place under the leadership of the National Council of Churches and its co-operative curriculum project 
all  of this came to public attention in the civil court in June, 1966, in the State of Washington, where 2 Bible Presbyterian clergymen - the Rev. Thomas Miller and the Rev. Harold Webb - challenged the University of Washington's course entitled,  'The Study of the Bible as Literature'.  there in the syllabus prepared by a university professor this higher critical assault upon the Scriptures was being offered as the truth, the various documents - 'J',

*23  'E', 'P', 'D' - being explained as teh way in which the Pentateuch was put together at least 1000 years after Moses lived.
Dr. Allen A. MacRae, professor of Old Testament in Faith Theological Seminary and a distinguished scholar with a massive accumulation of facts, went on the witness stand to testify that there is no basis in history, no evidence of any kind, no findings in archaeology,  that any such documents s 'J', 'E','P' and 'D' ever existed. yet it is this delusion  - and let me say 'fraud' (def - 'deceit', trickery, sharp practice) which has been perpetrated against the Christian church and which is at the basis of this entire 20th century attack upon the Bible. it is this which is responsible for the unbelief that brought about the demand for this Confession of 1967.
furthermore, it must be emphatically said that the Bible carries its own credentials and that it was written for the ordinary man to read, that reading it he might believe its message of salvation and receive the gift of everlasting life and be born again.

if, in order to understand the Scriptures, the church has such an obligation, then we must say that only the church is in a position to explain and to expound the  Scriptures and that the ordinary man must first attend to the church's appraisal of such literary and historical understanding before he can proceed in any responsible manner to examine and consider the Scriptures. in this way the devastating effect of this so-called historical and literary criticism has elevated the church to a position over the Bible where the church tells its constituents what they are to believe concerning Moses and his relationship to his writings. this, however, reflects against the statement of Jesus Christ, who says that Moses wrote of Him. and so Jesus Christ is only a creature of His day. the distance that we have traveled from the Bible  as the only infallible rule of faith and practice may now be seen in the last sentence.
5.  'As God has spoken His word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that He will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture. 

*24  at last we have arrived. really to find the Word of God we must search 'in every form of human culture'. having deserted the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, now we are to search through all the forms of human culture and there we may find god speaking just as He speaks through the Scriptures which in the new confession are only the words of men in our present changing world. but whatever words of men in our present changing world. but whatever this god is who is speaking through these various forms of human culture and who is alleged here to be speaking through the Scriptures in our present world, He certainly is not the god who gave to us the Holy Scriptures as they now stand.

this conclusion is inescapable , for this reference here to God speaking 'His word' is 'in diverse cultural situations'. this unites us directly with the whole approach to the Scriptures that the liberals have adopted - that the Bible is not a special revelation; it is the report of the struggle of various religious peoples,  particularly the Israelites, through a long history, and out of their experience in their various cultural circumstances God has spoken 'His word'. the Bible is not the Word of God, it is the words of men, but out of the report of these 'cultural situations',  then and now we are supposed in some way to discern this word. this fits in exactly with the phraseology of the ordination vows that we considered in our previous discussion. moreover, as we pointed out at that time, this 'word' is spelled with a small 'w'. her again it is a small ''w' as are, of course, 'the words of men'.

what kind of Bible, therefore, do we have left? it has been ruined, fragmented and discredited by a Satanic assault which entered the church through the liberals and carried on a Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. Satan, who has sought to attack the word from without through all the centuries, has now successfully assaulted the Word of God inside of the United Presbyterian Church and brought about an open and confessed rejection of that Word as inspired, inerrant, infallible.

thus, I think we have been able to point out that in

*25  these 5 sentences the story of the last 80 years has been told and completed. this is the stance of 20th century liberalism. it crosses all denominational lines  and is at the heart of the whole ecumenical movement - the building of a world church. the strategies employed by the liberals to retain within the church all that they could and to avoid any serious break were brilliantly conceived and executed.

First they placed the entire emphasis upon Jesus Christ.  this is a proper emphasis in the Bible when both are accepted as infallible. the written word and the living Word are one and the same in the Holy Scriptures. but in this confession, the appeal to Jesus Christ is used to replace the appeal to the infallible Scriptures, which have been rejected. and even the Christ to whom they appeal is one whom they have gotten out of their book which they say in only 'the words of men'.

her then is the opening sentence of the section dealing with the Bible, which is designed to deceive. it reads:
'The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written'.
Jesus Christ indeed is a sufficient revelation of God. He is indeed the Word of God incarnate, when that is understood in its Scriptural meaning, but He is not 'the one sufficient revelation'.  the Holy Scriptures are the fullness of that revelation and He is presented by that revelation. the Westminster Confession recognizes this in its very opening paragraph. the Westminster Confession recognizes this in its very opening paragraph. the light of nature is not sufficient therefore God has given unto us a special revelation which is sufficient and the Westminster Confession identifies this revelation with  the Holy Scriptures, which includes all that God has been pleased to reveal to us concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. at this point, therefore, the new confession commits the gravest of errors. the church of Christ in the name of Jesus Christ can never be separated

*26  from the Bible or taken away from the Bible. this is indeed an aggravated sin.

moreover, the reference to the 'Word of God incarnate' has a capital 'W', while in the small sentence the reference to 'the word of God written' has a small 'w'.the insertion of the phrase 'as the word of God written' was made as a verbal concession to those in the church who still hold to the Westminster concept of the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. yet it does not mean that and was not inserted to mean that. this was clearly manifest in the General Assembly at the time of a historic discussion. certain liberals wanted this phrase eliminated. they thought that it was a hindrance to a consistent statement of the position that the confession took. this had been inserted since the first reading of the confession a year ago and yet, both the committee that prepared the document of the position that the confession took. this had been inserted since the first reading of the confession a year ago and yet, both the committee that prepared the document and the Committee of Fifteen appointed to study it for the year said that what changes they had made were essentially verbal and in no way modified the position or the direction of the confession.when, therefore, the question of deleting the phrase 'which are received and obeyed as the word of God written', was presented, the chairman of the drafting committee, Dr. Edward A. Dowey, was asked to state his position. he stepped slowly and deliberately to the podium and said, 'I favor the amendment', which was that it should be deleted. and then he added,  'But I recommend that it be left in'. there was a gasp. the audience seemed stunned, and then there was a spontaneous reaction of laughter throughout the entire assembly.
here was the  contradiction. these words were not essential to the position and the true meaning of the confession. if they were left out, it would eliminate any possibility of confusion or question. but if they were left in, the conservatives who wanted to remain in the church would have something to which they could vainly point. thus his desire to keep the unity of the present organization was greater than his desire to have a confession that consistently stated his vies. this is true ecumenism. at this point expediency replaced principle, accommodation  replaced integrity, unity

*27  and a desire for unity overruled the obligation to state the truth. yet one may say that since these gentlemen are not clear as to what the truth exactly is and they are rejecting the truth of the infallibility of the Scriptures, this weakness is manifest in them and is a part of their very disposition.

Dr. Robert Lamont, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, who had been placed on the  Committee of Fifteen to review the confession as proposed in 1965, actually spoke in behalf of the new confession in this matter as it relates to the Holy Scriptures. he insisted that the new confession, as they had brought it before then, had what he called a very high view of Scripture. and he quoted the next sentence in the confession,  'The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the  witness without parallel.' let it be said that no matter what the parallel or what the comparison or noncomparison may be, as long as the Scriptures are not confessed to be the infallible word of God, the highest of praise coming short of this truth is an offense  to that Word and to God, Himself. thus we have eulogies and exaltations, praise and adulation of the Scriptures on the part of the conservatives, a sort of 'whistling in the dark' we would characterize it, which is carried on to justify their acceptance of a position that does no give to the Bible its due and its glory. it Is the Word of God.
this leaves Dr. Lamont and men in his position in a difficult place in the presence of this very section dealing with the Bible.
in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter I, Paragraph II, we read, 'under the name of Holy Scripture, or the  Word of God written'. here the Word is spelled with a capital 'W', equated and identified with the Holy Scriptures and immediately in this paragraph we have the names of the 66 books. there can be no possibility of misunderstanding, evasion, or doubt. now in the new confession we had the phrase 'word of God written' with a small 'w'.

and lest there be any possibility of anyone, after this, thinking otherwise, as we have already pointed out, the

*28  confession says,  'The Scriptures...are...the words of men...' Thus in one place we have 'the word of God written', a small 'w' and in another place,  'The Scriptures ...are....the words of men', small 'w'.  it is, therefore, out of these words of men, uninspired, that the individual preacher, as we saw in the previous chapter on the ordination vows, is to determine by the Holy Spirit the 'word (God's word ', small 'w') to you. ' thus the liberals have carried the day and at this point they made the transition, declaring  their position, but leaving behind a few phrases to which some men may cling in a desire to remain within the church, to use its properties, to benefit by its pensions and to stay with the 'church of their fathers' - even though it is now in apostasy. thus the hears of men are made bare and the liberals have been successful in maintaining their inclusivist concept of the church and carrying along with them the conservative who no longer can say, 'As long as the confession is not changed, I will stay in the church'. but now that the confession has been changed and even the Westminster Confession's testimony to the  of God has been abandoned, they still remain. indeed it is interesting to see throughout this confession how Scriptural language and terminology is used again and again to say a most un-Biblical thing. Satan used Scripture to tempt Christ, and now Satan is using the familiar words to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect.

the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc., in its commanding ad of Dec 27, 1966, appraised the situation correctly:
the 1967 Confession does not rig true. it is so filled with ambiguities, undefined statements, involved meanings, and obscure language that it becomes possible to rationalize almost any point of view the reader seeks to establish.

as I close this discussion on the Holy Scriptures, I wish to call attention to a statement in the Westminster Confession's first chapter which explains exactly what has happened in the production of this new confession.

*29  Section V., after referring to the 'incomparable excellencies' of the Scripture which 'abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God', declares, 'yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts'.  the men who drafted this Confession of 1967 could not have had that witness in their hearts or they would have believed the bible to be the Word of God and would have rejoiced in the original ordination vows which their unbelief required that they lay aside. it is this work of the Spirit in the heart of each believer, not separated from and independent of the Holy Scriptures, but 'by and with the Word', which establishes and seals that faith that no man or even Satan is able to assail. for this reason it is important that, when the Bible is translated, the translators be believers, for this factor is essential to any scholarly handling of God's Word. this explains the reasons the King James Version is so harmonious and such a unit, and on the other hand why the Revised Standard Version, copyrighted and authorized by the National Council of Churches, rejects the virgin birth in Isaiah 7.14 and is full of all manner of contradictions and reflections against the deity of Jesus Christ.
when men who do not have this inward work of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the  Trinity, turn to the Scriptures, they come from their study with a different book, a different Christ and a different cross. and the true Christian can understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, 'We also believe, and therefore speak' - we confess.

Chapter 3 - The Lord Jesus Christ

*30  the whole new confession is built around Jesus Christ. Part I offers the subject, 'the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ'.  thus it uses a Scriptural phrase, and the first section is devoted to Jesus Christ.

however, what is her done with Jesus Christ - the way in which He is used and the manner in which He is presented -= is just as revolutionary as is their rejection of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
the Christ of this confession is a sinner. in the plainest of language we are told He 'became a brother to all kinds of sinful men'.  He was 'a Palestinian Jew' who 'lived among his own people and shard their needs, temptations, joys and sorrows.
but in truth He redeemed sinful men and became an elder brother to those who were of the household of faith. he was in no sense a brother to the Pharisees,  whom He rebuked and assigned to hell. the leaders of the Sanhedrin He said were 'of your father the devil'. He excoriated them in the strongest of terms and said they cold not escape the damnation of hell. they were a 'generation of viprs'. Matt. 23.23
at this point the confession embraces the erroneous doctrine that is so popular today, the universal brotherhood of man and the universal Fatherhood of God. which is used as the text for the Great society and socialism.
we are told that in Jesus Christ 'true humanity was realized once for all', and that 'His complete obedience led him into conflict with His people'. what was the obedience that led Him into conflict? the confession does not

*31  say.  these matters, as they relate  to sin and His sacrifice, must be spelled out clearly. always at this particular juncture, as we shall see when we come to the chapter dealing with the Cross, there is a vagueness, a broad area in which all these different viewpoints can safely rest and find comfort.

when the entire confession is built around Jesus Christ with this emphasis upon Him, so as to get away from the Bible's infallibility, surely it was incumbent upon the framers of the new confession to give more of a detailed declaration concerning His person, especially if they were going to follow His work and carry that work through the reconciling processes of the 20th century social revolution.

who then is this Christ?
what He pre-existent?
was He conceived by the Holy Spirit?  a motion was made on the floor of the General Assembly to amend the confession so that it would declare that Jesus Christ was born  of a virgin.  a second to the motion was obtained, but no one would rise to defend it. a sad spectacle it was indeed!  the Christ of the new confession is not virgin born. the virgin birth of Jesus Christ had been one of the main issues in the great fundamentalist-modernist controversy through the years. it is taught in the Old and New Testaments. it was specifically attacked by the historic Auburn Affirmationists in 1923. I shall devote a chapter to this affirmation.
what one must now recognize is that these matters of the birth, the resurrection, the crucifixion, the ascension,  the return of Christ are phrases which in the modern theological jargon are symbolic. many liberals have no objection to them at all. all are a part of the myth of Christianity. to speak of the resurrection of Christ is perfectly proper because it is only a symbolical allegorical representation. because of this, the references to Jesus Christ especially can be so misleading; they are capable of many understandings.  this is the reason the confession uses these words over and over again, but never gets down to specifics and definitions. the key to this condition, as it is developed in the

*32  confession is seen in a declaration in the Preface, which says,  'The Trinity and the person of Christ are not redefined but are recognized and reaffirmed as forming the basis and determining the structure of the Christian faith.

How are they reaffirmed? they are never spelled out.
How are they recognized? the Westminister Confession which goes into great detail in both of these great areas of Christian truth and doctrine,  has now been laid aside.
it is no longer binding on the church;
it has been placed in a new category in a 'book of confessions',  where it now represents the mind of the church 300 years ago. none of the earlier creeds, even the Apostles' Creed,  are any longer binding on the church. all represent the mind of the church in the time of their writing, just as the Confession of 1967 does today.
thus we have references in the new confession to God the Father, Son and Holy spirit, but no actual definition of the Trinity or of the Person of Christ.
the Christ of the new confession has to be left undefined and uncertain or the purpose of the document can never be attained.






furthermore, we are told in the first sentence of the Preface,  'The church confesses its faith when it bears  a present witness to God's grace in Jesus Christ'.  and the 'present witness' does not require a declaration or a spelling out of the person of Christ or of the Trinity! it simply  is not done. moreover, when the confession talks about reaffirming these doctrines it is reaffirming something which, so far as the present witness of the church is concerned, does not exist. it is not reaffirming them in the Westminster Confession that has been laid aside. how many were keen enough to recognize the break and transition that was made at this point by this use of terms?  thus the confession 'recognizes' the Trinity   and the person of Christ in a meaningless statement which effectively eliminates them in their 'present witness'. words and a convenient

*33twist have successfully enabled the   framers of the confession to leave the Christ of the Westminster Confession far behind. in fact, the church has ceased to be a witness to the Christ confessed in the Westminster Confession. He is a hindrance to their cause of reconciliation and revolution.
let us now consider what has been rejected.
Chapter VIII of the Westminster Confession is entitled ,  'Of Christ the Mediator'.
Section I reads:
it pleased God, in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man,
the prophet, priest, and king,
the head and Savior of His Church;
the heir of all things and
the judge of the world;
unto whom He did, from all eternity, give a people to be His seed and
to be by Him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified and glorified.

Section II reads:
the Son of  God, the second person in the Trinity,
being very and eternal God,
of one substance and equal with the Father,
did, when the fullness of time was come  take upon Him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof,
yet without sin;
being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. so that two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition or confusion.
which person is very  God and very man, yet one Christ the only Mediator between God and man.

section III reads:
the Lord Jesus , in His human nature thus united to the divine, was sanctified and anointed with the Holy Spirit above measure;
having in Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;
in whom it pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell:
to the end that being holy, harmless, undefiled and full of grace and truth, He might be thoroughly furnished to execute the office of a Mediator and Surety. which office He took not unto Himself

*34  but was thereunto called by His Father; who put all power and judgment into His hand and gave Him commandment to execute the same.

section IV reads:
this office the Lord Jesus did most willingly undertake: which, that he might discharge, he was made under the law and did perfectly fulfill it;
endured most grievous torments immediately in His soul and
most painful sufferings in His body;
was crucified and died ;
was buried and remained under the power of death, yet saw no corruption.
on the third day He arose from the dead, with the same body in which he suffered;
with which He ascended into heaven
and there sitteth at the right hand of His Father, making intercession;
and shall return to judge men and angels, at the end of the age.

all this has been done away with in the new confession in favor  of a sinful Christ.

how could these great summaries of the teaching of the Bible possibly be out of date? this truth abides forever and should not the 'present witness' of the church include all of this with a binding obligation to maintain it and to teach it?
but this problem is not common to the Presbyterians today. Anthony Towne, writing in the Christian Century, Jan 11, 1967,  'In Defense of Heresty', discussed the 39 Articles of the Episcopal Church  and the Church of England also, which in the main were taken over by the Methodists. Article I,  'Of Faith in the Holy Trinity', reads,
there is but one living and true God,
everlasting,
without body, parts or passions;
of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;
the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.  and in unity of this Godhead there be 3 persons, of one substance, power and eternity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.'

then he mounts his scoffing:  'do the indignant bishops who accuse Bishop (James A.) Pike of heresy seriously expect the faithful today to pray to the Water It Is Article I presumes to describe.

*35  I have news for those indignant bishops:  few pray to that Whatever It Is'.

in summary he indeed fulfilled the prediction of Scripture, 'that there shall come in the last days scoffers'. He writes:  'Having examined the Articles of Religion with all faithful diligence,  I conclude that they are generally vain,  frequently pompous, sometimes vacuous, often uncharitable, occasionally incomprehensible, now and then preposterous and, most of the time, authentically hilarious. if such an opinion constitutes heresy, you, dear Episcopal reader, are sullying your eyes with the words of a hapless heretic. set aside this dangerous wickedness and betake yourself to the nearest confessional (if you are high church), or fall on your knees (if you are low church)!

I do not know 'all Satan's lurking-places,  but I am in no doubt that one of them is the articles of Religion'.
getting back to the Confession of 1967,
it does not have Christ Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father.
it does not have Him interceding for the saints.
it does not have Him coming again  in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
it does speak of His being raised from the dead on the third day.
what happened  to Him after He was raised from the dead?
where did He go" where is He now?
all references to Heaven and hell were left out of the confession.
when these are the issues at stake as they relate to the confession and loyalty to the truth of the Bible, their elimination has a double significance. it is under the strategy of rephrasing, restating, so that matters will be acceptable  to men of the 20th century, that this unbelief is manifest and the full nature of it is sought to be obscured by using familiar and honored words. it is shrewdly and brilliantly accomplished.
the obligation placed upon the church by the Scriptures is to confess the whole counsel of God. the Presbyterians now have a document of some 4,000 words which reorganizes everything around the idea of reconciliation. it is indeed a tortuous reappraisal which leaves the heart and the mind of the true believer groping and struggling. in instance after instance it seems to come close to the truth, but it

*36  does not quite make it. these statements presuppose a present knowledge and understanding in the hearts of  those who read and this presupposition is essential to the acceptance of his inclusivist concept of he church. the Westminster Confession of Faith spelled out the truth so simply , clearly and in such detail, that there could be no doubt as to what the church believed and confessed. thus it had to be abandoned. and if there is one point where the church should be clear in is confession it must be with Jesus Christ. yet at this point, Jesus Christ is used to take the people away from the Christ of the Holy Scriptures. one wonders, indeed. when Antichrist comes he will be much like the original Christ and yet counterfeit and will not the Antichrist carry on the ministry of reconciliation which is outlined here in all these matters of social action.
the reference to the resurrection of Jesus is as follows,  'the Resurrection of Jesus is God's sign that He will consummate His work of creation and reconciliation beyond death and bring to fulfillment the new life begun in Christ'. it sounds well, but could have many different explanations.  Romans 1.4 teaches that by the resurrection of Christ from the dead God declared Jesus Christ to be hi Son with power. and this reference, bringing 'to fulfillment the new life begun  in Christ' offers the kind of language that can satisfy people who read into it the bodily resurrection of the dead, the just and the unjust. this is the kind of language that satisfies individuals who consider this new life begun in Christ to be what they are seeking to do in transforming society and establishing the kingdom of God on earth,  God accomplishing this through the Christian community rather than through the personal, visible return of Jesus Christ from Heaven. thus we have illustration after illustration of how language is employed to make comfortable a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints, even contradictions, all appealing to the same phraseology, with all agreeing that this is satisfactory to them. certainly such a formula for inclusivism could never be satisfactory to the God of truth. this will kill any church.
another example may be seen in the statement concerning

*37  Jesus Christ in His relationship to the church. 'Christ is head of this community, the church, which began with the apostles and continues through all generation'. aside from the fact that it is not Presbyterian or Reformed doctrine that the church began with the apostles, the  real point here is that the head of this community determined the nature of the community. all that is necessary to do is to change he complexion of the person at the top and this will alter the nature of the work  which this head performs.
the Christ of the Scriptures, as the Head of the Church, gives us a true and pure and militant body of faithful believers, obedient to His commandments; but  the Christ of this modern reconstruction heads an entirely different type of organization, which is now moving out to destroy the difference between the sacred  and the secular and to soil its hands in the social revolution of the hour. by this Jesus can head the church and it is in the phrase, 'Christ is head', that we have buried the fact that a great revolutionary change has taken place  in the very nature of the church because a different kind of individual has been placed in charge. yet they still call him 'Christ' and all agree that whoever He may be in their view He is 'head'.  all use the name of 'Christ' though their understanding of His person and work may and often does vary as widely as heaven and hell.

the new confession is full of the technique of  revolution. the use of the word 'love' also covers a multitude of contradictions. the phrase,  'the purpose of His love, does not identify that purpose, and whoever reads the phrase is able to impart to that phrase what he in his subjective thinking considers that purpose to be. thus all agree  in their affirmation, while they disagree in their belief. this phrase is the conclusion of the sentence,  'the power of God's love in Christ to transform the world discloses that the Redeemer is the Lord and Creator who made all things to serve The Purpose Of His Love. but this Redeemer who is the Lord- is He not the Redeemer when He leads in revolutionary adjustments and conflicts with the Communist

*38  world as rapproachement and dialogue bring about reconciliation and peace between the Communist wold and the free world? is he not just as much a Redeemer by producing this sort of realignment as he is in His death upon the Cross?
brilliant minds indeed, far beyond he compass of mortal men, inspired and designed his use of language and phraseology! it is the formula necessary to bring a declared unity out of a host of real and unreconcilable contradictions. disunity becomes unity, not in truth, but only in outward affirmation.

when we look at the real and specific meaning of the Cross and the death of our Lord, we see this strategy being employed with an obvious endeavor to approach as near to the truth as possible without ever reaching the truth itself.

*39  Chapter 4 - The Cross of Christ

the section of the new confession dealing with Jesus Christ has in it a most carefully phrased paragraph which rejects the teaching of the bible concerning the death of our Lord. this is done by 2 devices - first, by describing it as 'a mystery',  and second, by relegating the various expressions of the scriptures that explain the substance and meaning of the Cross to the realm of theory. the new confession actually offers no true meaning for the Cross, except that it is all hidden in the love of God'.
4 sentences make up this paragraph and the importance of this issue for the salvation of precious souls is such that a careful consideration of each sentence separately is required.

1. God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ is a mystery which the Scriptures describe in various ways.

nowhere in the bible is the death of Christ described as a mystery to the believer. there are references to mystery in the bible -
the mystery of godliness, which is Christ in you the hope of glory;
the mystery of iniquity and

Mystery, Babylon the Great.
but the Cross is not a mystery to the Christian. God  has been careful to present in detail the full and glorious meaning of this one act of reconciliation when Christ died upon the Cross for the sins of men. in the matter that concerns the redemption which god has purchased for His people ,  He has left nothing in the realms of mystery, uncertainty, doubt, or confusion. in fact. since a man is justified by his faith in the death of Christ, to leave any mystery whatsoever surrounding this supreme sacrifice of our Saviour is to leave doubt, uncertainty

*40 and insecurity. there simply cannot be any mystery about this work of the sacrifice of Christ if the sinner is at peace and fully satisfied in his own mind and heart concerning what god has done for him upon the Cross. it is just the other way around. the death of Christ is called  good news. it is the greatest announcement that has ever been proclaimed to men. and the full significance of this death in all of its relationship to God's justice and his love is explained in the simplest possible terms.

the fact that 'mystery' is introduced into this new confession about this matter of the Cross at this point reveals that here is unbelief, which, refusing to accept what the Bible teaches concerning the Cross, relegates the whole matter to an area of uncertainty and mystery.

the Apostle paul wrote, 'I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. I Cor. 2.2 the content of the Gospel was spelled out in such precise terms that paul taught that if an angel from Heaven preached 'any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto  you, let him be accursed'. Gal. 1.8 to obscure, to change or to add to this Gospel was an aggravated sin against God, Paul said, for it indeed kept from men the understanding of the way in which God had made possible their salvation. it has been the task of Satan through all the years to obscure and hinder the Gospel. the Apostle wrote, 'If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2Cor.  4.3,4

let us now consider the various ways in which the new confession says the Scriptures present this mystery.
2. it is called the sacrifice of a lamb,  a shepherd 's life given for his sheep, atonement by a priest;  again it is ransom of a slave, payment of debt, vicarious satisfaction of a legal penalty and victory over the powers of evil'.
is there any mystery about 'the sacrifice of a lamb'?

the whole announcement of John the Baptist was,  'Behold  the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. I John 1.29

*41 Christ was the sacrifice and everything that the old Testament  taught about the shedding of blood by the slaying  of the lamb in an offering for sin was literally fulfilled in Jesus Christ. this showed the continuity of the plan of redemption from the very beginning.

is there anything mysterious about 'a shepherd's life given for his sheep?  none whatever, when the Shepherd is Christ, who said, 'I am the good shepherd:  the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep....therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I  have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. this commandment have I received of my Father'. John 10.11,17,18

is there anything mysterious with an 'atonement by a priest'? not when that Priest is Christ, who 'after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God'. Heb. 10.12 'for Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true;  but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:  nor yet that he should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth in the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. heb. 9.24-6

is there anything mysterious about his death being a 'ransom of a slave'? not when Jesus Christ was Himself that Ramsom offered to God to satisfy God's infinite justice, that He might deliver those of us who were slaves to sin for He said,  'Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin' (John 8.34) and 'The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. Mark 10.45
is there anything mysterious about the 'payment of debt'? not when the debt is the total burden of our sin which merited death and judgment and Jesus Christ offered Himself, the just for the unjust, in our room and stead that He might bring us to God.

*42  is there anything mysterious about a vicarious satisfaction of a legal penalty?  not when Christ is the one who paid that penalty to satisfy divine justice and to reconcile us to God.

is there anything mysterious about victory over the powers of evil'?  not when the one who obtains the victory is Jesus Christ,  who was indeed as the Scriptures said, the propitiation for our sins.

there is no mystery here. in fact, the Scriptures present this truth in such a way that our minds and our hearts may be fully satisfied and we may understand exactly what took place in that great transaction. God's grace and love provided the sacrifice to meet every demand of His justice. his love and His justice kissed at the Cross. the believer understands and, because he understands, the believer can say with the Apostle, he 'loved me and gave Himself fro me, and 'We love Him because He first loved us'. our love is not built upon a mystery.it rests upon truth and understanding, because we have believed God's Word.
we come to a very fine and keen line which is drawn but which one can now see clearly in the light of the present design.
3. 'These are expressions of a truth which remains beyond the reach of all theory in the depths of God's love for man.
the new confession offers these 'expressions' but the real truth itself cannot be reached or found by them. these expressions are in the realm of 'theory' which cannot reach the  truth still mysterious and hidden in God's love. whatever this truth may be which cannot be known and cannot be expressed because it is so mysterious is beyond the realm of all these theories that have been devised but which fail to express it. all have failed and somewhere out there in the depths of God's love for man the truth exists, but man cannot reach it or explain it or arrive at it, so it must forever remain mysterious and beyond all these various theories. 
this is a simple device for denying the Gospel and obscuring the meaning of the Cross which God wants every

*43  man to understand so that he might believe God and rejoice in God's grace and truth. this love that the Confession speaks about is a strange kind of love indeed. it hides the truth rather than revels the truth. it makes the truth mysterious rather than plain and a ground for life and hope.

thus it is that the preachers of the new confession preach the love of God for man, but just how this love actually saves man cannot be explained because it is mysterious and the Biblical terms, moreover, involve 'theories'.
this at this point an appeal to the love of God is actually used to obscure and to remove from any real commitment or proclamation or belief what that love actually did for man.

thus at this point an appeal to the love of God is actually used to obscure and to remove from any real commitment or proclamation or belief what that love actually did for man.

this we can talk about the love of God, but when it comes to what happened on the Cross all we can do is to offer some theories and no theory can possibly explain what took place there. no one can really know, Satan had done his work again in attacking the Cross. 

but, praise God, what took place there was not a theory. it was a solemn, definite, forensic act in which a judicial penalty  was fully satisfied and the substitute, our Saviour, bore our sins in His own body on the Tree. all of this, of course, is necessary in the confession to provide place and comfort for a wide range of unbelief and the rejection of the one message of the blood of the cross.

what is even more significant at this point is that the Cross is called 'God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ', and the theme of the new confession is built upon reconciliation in Christ. therefore, of all the points on which the Confession ought to be clear and precise the one  on the new confession comes to discuss this specific act of reconciliation, it offers a blur, a theory, a mystery and the true Gospel of Jesus Christ is literally crossed out. this explains also why it is necessary to read a new and broader interpretation into the concept of reconciliation presented by the confession.  this we shall see in detail in our section dealing with 'reconciliation'. they do have a program for social reconciliation. the chapter on the Auburn Affirmation

*44  will offer more light on the 'theories' in the church.  the minds that worked on this paragraph were keen, and they moved all around the Cross with the 'unbelief' yet wanted to offer something 'sure'.  we come now to the fourth sentence of this paragraph.

4. they reveal the gravity, cost and sure achievement of God's reconciling work'.

these theories and attempted explanations only reveal the gravity and the cost and they would even tell us that there was some sure achievement, but nobody is able to tell us just what that was or how it has been accomplished, because we have been told in the beginning that it is a mystery.

we therefore are confronted with apostasy,  'a falling away',  when it comes to presenting the Cross, its meaning and its message. it retreats from the true, pure Gospel. there is no place at this point in any such program for the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses from all sin.  thus, the word 'blood',  like Heaven and hell and other vital words, which are Scriptural, is eliminated. the confession rejects some words; conveniently uses others.
before i turn from the discussion of this section, so all -important and crucial, there is one other point that in apparent to those who are indeed born again and the children of God. I  have emphasized that the Cross is not a mystery to the believer. he understands it fully and has been saved by his faith in the sacrifice of Christ. bu there is a very real sense in which the Cross Is a mystery. it is a mystery to the ungodly and to the unbeliever.
all of this is developed by the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians, Chapter 2.  he told the brethren in Corinth,  'and I, brethren, when i came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. for i determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified'. He said 'My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:  that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God'. and then the Apostle

*45  makes the line of distinction,  'Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which god ordained before the world unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory'. then he explains in clear reference to the Bible,  'as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which god hath prepared for them that love Him. but God hath reveled them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of god'. next he insists,  'We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God'. there is no mystery to the believer here.
thus the Cross, the Gospel, is freely known by the work of the Holy Spirit to those who believe. it is no mystery, and our faith rests in the power of god. it rests in the wisdom of God as manifest in the Cross. to climax it all Paul writes, 'But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:  for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'. all of this has a direct application to the new confession and its terminology and the phrasing in relationship to the Cross. the Christian cries with the Apostle, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ'.  to the ungodly it is all a mystery, foolishness, a scandal.

it would therefore appear, on the basis of the teaching of the Word itself, that those who drafted this statement about 'God's reconciling act in Jesus Christ' being a mystery were themselves in the position of those descried in First Corinthians, Chapter 2. it would appear that the spirit  of the world has here described the Cross and left it meaningless and mysterious. indeed, as the Apostle concludes for all believers, 'But we have the mind of Christ'. the

*46  believer therefore understands the Cross. this is why he loves it and preaches it.

in this 20th century, when apostasy is so general throughout the churches, men have a way of calling their unbelief, faith and their darkness, light. these matters are not confined to the United Presbyterian Church.
the Methodist Church, for example, with its 10,000,000 members, had as its most prominent bishop for many years G. Bromley Oxnam. he was chairman of the Council of Bishops. he was president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. he was one of he first presidents of the world Council of Churches, elected in 1948. during his life he was considered the No. 1 Protestant leader from the US on the world level.
Bishop Oxnam wrote a book entitled, A Testament of Faith.in this book, referring to Christ's sufferings on the Cross, he said:  'I do not think that this was part of a predetermined drama wherein the great Playwright set down the lines to be repeated, with a player, in this case Christ, moving here and there as the Director ordered, the end known from the beginning. it is almost blasphemous for someone to say that this is so and that the Cross was simply a part of the act....when He hung from that cross and cried, 'my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? surely this was not a bit of a drama foreseen; it was the cry of a man well-nigh brokenhearted'. these quoted words are from psalm 22, which 1000 years before Christ was upon the earth, described in gruesome detail His death by crucifixion, even the casting of lots over His vesture. the blasphemy was on the part of the bishop, not on the part of the Scriptures.
concerning the vicarious sacrifice he said, 'i have never been able to carry the idea of justice to the place where someone else can vicariously pay for what i have done in order to clean the slate.

these, indeed, are the ideas which led the Presbyterians in their new confession to relegate such explanations to the realm of theory and then attempt to hide as 'mystery'

*47  whatever the meaning of the Cross might have been in the death of Christ.

the bishop further said: 'Is God a Being  who must have the accounts squared y some death, the sacrifice of a Son even, that the individual's account  may be ruled off in 2 red lines, the balance in sin paid by a being who died long  since and left a great control account from which the Deity may draw forever? frankly,  such doctrines do not help me.

Oxnam is dead.
the Apostle Paul said:  'the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God....we preach Christ crucified ...unto them which are called...Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God'. I Cor. 1.18, 23,24

Chapter 5 - The Church

*48  the church now becomes powerful, very powerful.

the second part of the Confession of 1967 is entitled,  "the Ministry of Reconciliation'. it is divided into 2 sections - Section A, 'The Mission of the Chruch', and Section B,  'the Equipment of the Church'.
everything revolves around 'the church'. the section opens:  'To be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his reconciling  community. this community, the church universal, is entrusted with God's message of reconciliation and shares his labor of healing the enmities which separate men from God and from each other'.
one immediately observes the major difference between this emphasis upon the church and what we find in the Westminster Confession. there the emphasis is primarily upon the individual and the work of grace in the life of the  individual and the work of grace in the life of the individual. it is not until Chapter XXV that there is section dealing with the church. instead, the Westminster document deals with the mattes of justification, adoption, sanctification, saving faith, repentance unto life, good works, perseverance of the saints, assurance of grace and salvation, the law of God, Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, religious worship and the Christian Sabbath,  the civil magistrate, marriage and divorce. it is the individual who is redeemed. he give his testimony and stand before God justified. he is the one in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. 'What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost...? I Cor. 6.19
in the new confession, on the other hand, there is very little emphasis on the individual. his new life, we are told

*49  'takes shape in a community'.  in the new confession it is the 'reconciling' community and this community 'maintains continuity with the apostles and with Israel by faithful obedience to his call'.

but what is this 'continuity';  what is 'his call'? it is not the infallible word of God. this would keep continuity. but this sentence is another one of these nebulous ideas which can mean what anybody desires to read into it, and which in this new confession seems to be the direct participation by the church in all manner of political and social action endeavors. in truth, the church maintains continuity with the apostles and with Israel by believing exactly what the apostles and Israel believed and by confessing the same faith that the apostles and prophets maintained. the faith of the apostles should be the faith of the church today and since the church has expressed this faith in its various creeds through the years and centuries and especially the Presbyterians in the Westminster Confession of Faith. there is no need or occasion for an abandonment of this faith or a reformulation of the belief of the apostles.
under the section entitled, 'Direction',  the new confession sets before the church an entirely new and untried path to tread and in doing so it would make out of he church a second Jesus Christ. we read, 'The life, death, resurrection and promised coming of Jesus Christ has set the pattern for the church's mission'. the pattern of the church's mission is found in no such parallel. it is found specifically in the Great Commission in which the risen Lord, before His departure into Heaven, told His disciples, 'All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever i have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen' Matthew 28.18-20
so far as this pattern is concerned, is the church to have a sinless life such as Christ had; a vicarious death such as our Savior suffered; a bodily resurrection from the dead, such as His? and then, is the church to come, as He is

*50  coming , in the clouds of Heaven? at what point is it to be raised from the grave in its present mission? we are confident that the ordinary reader, without a knowledge of he total program and the far-reaching implications of the ecumenical movement, would be at a loss to understand what is involved. repeatedly, however, the emphasis in the World Council of Churches is that the churches must die. the local churches and individual churches, must die, in order that they may arise in the larger, fuller, organic union of the ecumenical church. and when the church is finally united throughout the whole world, then she will have reached her promised 'coming'.  the ecumenical movement destroys and devours churches in order that it alone may be 'the church'.

that such is the import of this particular parallel and pattern can be seen in this explanation,  'In the power of the risen Christ and the  hope of His coming the church sees the promise of God's renewal of man's life in society  and of Gods victory over all wrong'. it is from this thesis that we move out in this section of the 1967 document not to confess a faith but to outline a program of action which is misnamed a confession of faith. the renewal of man's life in society is the manifesto for the proposed actions in all areas of the current political strife. thus, there is direction - 'The church follows this pattern in the form of its life and in the method of its action. so to live and serve is to confess Christ as Lord'. it would seem, therefore, that if one does not follow this patten and carry out the specific line of action that is here confessed, one would indeed be denying Christ as lord rather than confessing Him. indeed, the document comes close to asserting this very thing in the later section dealing with 'Reconciliation in Society', with these words, '...the church which identifies the sovereignty of any one  nation or any one way of life with the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its calling'. in order, therefore, to reach this ultimate goal, national sovereignties are going to have to be dissolved

*51  and some form of international order created which will be the kingdom of God society.

absent from this new arrangement for the church's mission is the concept of the church as set forth by the Apostle Paul as being 'the house and pillar and ground of the truth. I Tim. 3.15 the truth is the word of God. this is where the Westminster Confession of faith started. the truth is not the church. there is no light in the pillar, or power in the written Word and the living Word, Jesus Christ.

the first real task of the church in its new direction is to deal with its own diisions and internal disunity. it is stated, 'the unity of the church is compatible with a wide variety of forms,  but it is hidden and distorted when variant forms are allowed to harden into sectarian divisions, exclusive denominations, and rival factions.'  the Presbyterians, therefor, now have abandoned any though of continuing over a period of years to be Presbyterians. what they have cannot be allowed 'to harden'. they must be prepared to advance the unity of the church, even within a wide variety of forms. this, therefore, is a clear authorization in the creed, the Confession of 1967, for the implementation necessary for the United Presbyterian Church to become a part of the larger denomination now taking shape under the 'Consultation on Church Union'. in this Consultation 8 different denominations, as a result of  a call issued by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake in the pulpit of Bishop James A. Pike in San Francisco on Dec 4, 1960,  are moving to form one church.  in fact. Dr. Blake has indicated repeatedly that this is just the first step in the larger, over-all church unity which will finally result in a reunion of protestantism, all Orthodox, all Anglican and the Roman Catholic Church.

the first sentence under the section of the  confession entitled, 'Forms and Order', reads, 'The institutions of the people of God change and vary as their mission requires in different times and places'. and the present times and the present places now are requiring that this mission be

*52 done in a complete abandonment of exclusive denominations and the dying of the churches as they finally find their resurrection in the unity of a one-world church. in a real and favorable sense, for the ecumenical cause the United Presbyterian Church must die. all churches must die until they all finally live, not to die, in a world superchurch. it is this ',coming' great church that will then bring renewal to society. the death of a church is a pattern for building the ecumenical church. in this sense the ecumenical leaders should appreciate the title of this book, The Death of a Church.

having thus taken care of the whole ecumenical question as it relates to reunion,  the new confession moves on to implement the church's action 'in society for the sake of mission in the world'.  and as this line of thought is developed and a basis for action provided, it is, of course, garnished with a reference to prayer and Bible study, which are a part of he church's worship and theological  reflection.
at this point the individual accepts an entirely different position and perspective from that which he has in the Westminister Confession. we are told;  'Each member is the church in the world, endowed by the Spirit with some gift of ministry and is responsible for the integrity of his of his witness in his own particular situation. he is entitled to the guidance and support of the Christian community and is subject to its advice and correction. he is turn, in his won competence, helps to guide the church'. the references, therefor, to the support of the church as he moves out into action in the social realm is obviously a basis for the justification of the participation of clergymen in the various revolutionary endeavors as they relate to civil disobedience, sit-ins and civil rights in the US.  here is the justification for  civil disobedience, of which Dr. Blake himself was a prime example on the fourth of July 1963, when in Baltimore he deliberately defied the law, was arrested and carried on  paddy wagon to the police station. when an individual in the church feels led to engage in this sort of revolutionary endeavor of one kind or another, he may look for support to the Christian.

*53  community,  according to the new confession. the reference,  however, to  the church's advice and correction could very easily provide the basis for General Assembly rebuke and action against any conservative in the church who sought to resist the endeavors of other church leaders in the promotion of the  action sections of the new confession.  will there come a day when this aspect of the confession will also be implemented?  and, finally, we are told that, in order for the church to become 'a more effective instrument of the mission of reconciliation', 'every church order must be open to such reformation as may be required....'
the idea, therefore, that the church has a message, an unchangeable message,  a commission from her Lord, which she must faithfully discharge, fins itself laid aside as the church adjusts its message, its form, its order, its program,  its all, to the idea that it has become an instrument of the  mission f reconciliation, and more particularly, as that  reconciliation,  and more particularly, as that reconciliation relates to the pagan world about us and the structures of world society.

perhaps this is the most effective place in our discussion to introduce a consideration of the passage in Second Corinthians, Chapter 5, where the Apostle Paul discusses this 'ministry of reconciliation'. this phrase is found in verse 18 and it is made the title of part II in the new confession. whey one considers this text in its full setting, he sees how completely it has been perverted.

the reconciliation which is spoken of in the Bible has been fully and finally accomplished by the death of Jesus Christ. Paul says, 'For the love of Christ constraineth us'  because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead'.  2 Cor. 5.14
Christ is the One who died for us all and we all, therefore, were dead.  'And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again v15.  since Christ did this for us, we now are alive and we are living to serve him as He is presented to us in the Scriptures. the reality of this new life was evident when we became new creatures, for the text says: 'Therefore if any man

*54  be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation'. vv.17-8 it is thus clear that reconciliation was already accomplished on our behalf, for us, by Christ. the Christian does not need to be reconciled again and again, because this has already been accomplished for him.
our ministry of reconciliation, then, is to carry the same message by which we were reconciled to those who are outside of the fellowship and the church of God. this message is the Gospel, which  does not change from generation to generation, or from time and place as is here suggested.  Thus God says, 'to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation' v.19 at this point the liberals and the modernists have taken a phrase completely out of its context.  this was all done on the Cross. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, but it is clearly indicated that this reconciliation was made possible only because Christ died for all who are the elect, and that this reconciliation is of those and for those who have been given to Christ by the Father. this is the Church, the true Church, the elect and because of the finished work of Christ our trespasses are not imputed unto us who have been justified by grace through faith. Christians, therefore have had  committed to them the 'word of reconciliation'.  they go out to tell others that God will do for others just as He had done for them. so here is the ministry of the word of reconciliation.

verse 20, then, stands out with sublime meaning to every individual who has been redeemed.  'Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech yo by us:  we pray you in Christ's stead,  be ye reconciled to God'. is paul here talking about some social system?  is he her talking about the Communist world being reconciled to the free world? is he here discussing civil rights legislation, or implying a basis for civil rights political  action

*55  in the US in 1965? such could not possible be the case, s seen in the last verse of the chapter,  'For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him'. the sinless Christ bore our sin in His own body on the Tree and because God accepted His sacrifice in our room and stead we have been made righteous in Christ.

a glorious section of the Bible is here perverted, misused and the word of reconciliation has been adopted by the liberals in this 20th century as a shibboleth under which they have been able to introduce their spurious Christianity, with the goal of making the social structure into the Kingdom of God.
in the section dealing with the Bible the authors or this confession could not believe it to be the infallible Word of God. they lacked faith. in the section dealing with Jesus Christ they could not believe Him to be sinless, the virgin-born one who shed His blood. they lacked faith.  in the section dealing with the church, they could not commit the church to the Great Commission, but out of the fruit of their own thinking they have evolved a program and this program they now call a confession of faith. as they explain the basis for this program in these broad general terms,in point after point their unbelief is further manifest. 
before we leave this section, we should ask, for our own edification, what then is the true social program of the church?  the answer is, 'The law of God, the 10 Commandments. her God has reveled to us His will in our relationship to Him and in our relationship to our neighbor.  no church could possibly improve upon this. however, when the United Presbyterian Church lays aside the Holy Scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, it lays aside also the 10 Commandment. this is the reason the liberals have developed another message which they call the social gospel  and even write  what they call social creeds.
it is relevant to recognize that in the removal of the Westminster Confession of Faith to the area of a Book of Confessions, where it takes its place among other historical

*56  documents that have such a value as the individual may be pleased to attribute to them, the Larger Catechism of the Westminster Confession was entirely eliminated. this was done in order to further eliminate from the church's  life the full significance of the law of God. there each of the 10 Commandments was discussed in detail, first from the standpoint of what is required and second, what is forbidden by each commandment.
this law is holy and righteous. its transgression is sin both for men and nations, and it is  the standard for all conduct for the redeemed. the so-called social gospel and the endeavors of the new confession in these areas is a shabby, superficial and impotent manifestation of human, and even fleshly, desire when set alongside the law of he Lord, which is perfect and which rejoices the soul of those who believe in the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures. it is evidence of the death of a church when that church forsakes the law of God and offers a social program built on its own so-called creative understanding.

*57  Chapter 6 -Religion

is the church a religion?
is it a human religion?
is the religion of the Hebrew  people to be separated from God's revelation to Israel?

the new confession indeed does raise strange questions and makes most un-Biblical assertions int the section dealing with what it calls 'Revelation and Religion'.

but the church is not a religion. we are dealing with the Christina religion and the Christian religion i revelation believed and obeyed by the people  of God. but the framers of this confession made a distinction between god's revelation to Israel and the religion of the Hebrew people. they had to make it, since they have rejected the Bible as the revealed Word of God. in fact, according to the theory and belief of these liberals, the Bible is simply a report of the development of the religion of the Hebrew people. this is the direct result of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, as it relates to the old Testament and the reorganization and redating of the various documents contained in the canon. but the hebrew people in truth received all of their knowledge and the commandments which they were to honor from their god. he gave them the 10 Commandments directly, written on a tablet of stone with His own finger. when, however, revelation, as it is written, inspired, in the Old Testament , is rejected one must come up with the idea that the Hebrew people had some sort of religious experience. that their experience was actually

*58  human in character and that this was similar at many points and often parallel to the religious experience of other people on the earth.
in teh same manner the confession states, 'The Christian religion, as distinct from God's revelation of himself, has been shaped throughout its history by the cultural forms of its environment'.  but God's revelation of Himself  as given in the New Testament and through His Son, Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in all the Scriptures, dose constitute the Christina religion. thus we are confronted with a wide range of differences between those who believe that Christianity is a revealed religion and those who believe that the Christina religion represents the evolutionary growth of people from generation to generation. under the latter we have the Confession of  1967, for the evolution continues. under the former we have the Westminster Confession of Faith,  which summarized and stated this revelation in such terms that the church could bind itself to it in solemn vows and remain steadfast in this truth
until the Lord comes again in the glory of His power. thus in the new confession we have the religion of  the Hebrews and the Christian religion, which are evolutionary developments, and, since the same process has been going on among other religions throughout the world, the confession explains, 'The Christin finds parallels betwen other religions and his own and must approach all rligions with opennes and respect'. Did Jesus Christ take such an attitude? He declared, all that