Mention must be made of the reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1929. This struggle, which brought the last of the theological seminaries of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. into the inclusivist stream of the broadening church, definitely involved the Auburn Affirmationists. Many of these signers were among the leaders in the battle to reorganize the institution, changing it technically from two boards of control-a Board of Directors and a Board of Trustees-to just one board of control. When this was done by the 1929 General Assembly, two signers of the heretical Auburn Affirmation were placed on the board. Princeton was the last of the great seminaries to be captured and its voice silenced. The Assembly and the liberals insisted, and the new Princeton Board emphasized, that the change made no difference whatsoever in the teaching or the program or the future of the institution.

I personally became a participant in this conflict. I went to Princeton Theological Seminary as a student in the fall of 1928, was elected president of the Junior Class, and supported, as most students did, the original design of the seminary. When Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, and Dr. Oswald T. Allis resigned from Princeton, and Dr. Allan A. MacRae, who was scheduled to begin teaching at Princeton, joined them, they removed to Philadelphia where they opened Westminster Theological Seminary. I became a student there.

What is more significant, perhaps, than anything else just now is that in the providence of God the chairman of the drafting committee of the Confession of 1967 was none other than a present professor at the reorganized Princeton, Dr. Edward A. Dowey. In the ovations and tributes that were heaped upon him in Boston we could not help but realize that the victory which indeed belonged to the Auburn Affirmationist struggle found its crowning leadership at Princeton Theological Seminary in the Confession of 1967. The years 1925 to 1967—42 of them—indicate that history has vindicated Dr. J. Gresham Machen and his associates. The story of Princeton alone in this struggle should be written in great detail, for the pattern of victory for the liberals is the same-unity, peace, plus vigorous efforts to discredit the conservatives.

It was in this struggle that Dr. Machen, who indeed was God’s chosen vessel, found the same issues permeating the life of the church in the program of the Board of Foreign Missions under the leadership of Dr. Robert E. Speer. The “Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry Report,” Re-Thinking Missions, Pearl Buck’s blatant unbelief, brought all the questions of departure from the faith into public notice. Dr. Machen introduced an overture into the New Brunswick Presbytery, of which he was a member and which included the Princeton Theological Seminary area. His printed brief, “Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.,” was carefully documented. The Presbytery refused to pass his overture, but Philadelphia Presbytery later presented the same overture to the General Assembly of 1933.

Dr. Machen and those associated with him sought by every proper and lawful means within the church to reform the Board of Foreign Missions and to bring its practice and teaching in line with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Holy Scriptures. When this effort was unsuccessful, in 1933, he and others took the initiative in forming an Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions outside the control and authority of the General Assembly. This Independent Board was to promote “truly Biblical missions” and to be an agency through which Christians of all churches, as they were led of the Lord, could obey the Great Commission given to us by Jesus Christ.

Presbyterians through the years have always been members of independent agencies, many of them. In fact, even Union Theological Seminary in New York withdrew from the control of the General Assembly at the time of the Briggs trial and it continued as an independent seminary to send its students into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. From an organizational and governmental standpoint there was nothing wrong with Dr. Machen or others establishing a missionary agency through which they could give their gifts and honor the Lord.

But the liberals and Auburn Affirmationists, fresh from their victories at Princeton, were determined to crush Machen and move on to the full control of the church for modernism and what is today ecumenism. This leadership produced what was called the “Mandate,” or the directives of the General Assembly of 1934. The General Council of the church, operating under what it called its “constitutional authority” “to superintend the concerns of the whole church,” prepared a lengthy document, “Studies of the Constitution,” contained in the Journal of the General Assembly of 1934, which concluded with specific directives. The four were:

1. That “The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions” be and is hereby directed to desist forthwith from exercising any ecclesiastical or administrative functions . . . .

The entire assumption of the Mandate was that the Independent Board was within the Presbyterian Church and under the jurisdiction and authority of the General Assembly. However, the Board was incorporated in the State of Pennsylvania by private individuals, was a private enterprise, and its very name, “The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions,” made it clear to all that it was in no way officially or organically connected with any Presbyterian Synod or Assembly. The Mandate’s false assumption, however, was essential for the attack on the Board.

2. That all ministers and laymen affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, who are officers, trustees or members of “The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions,” be officially notified by this General Assembly through its Stated Clerk, that they must immediately upon the receipt of such notification sever their connection with this Board, and that refusal to do so and a continuance of their relationship to the said Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, exercising ecclesiastical and administrative functions in contravention of the authority of the General Assembly, will be considered a disorderly and disloyal act on their part and subject them to the discipline of the Church.

Thus if the members failed to recognize the authority of the Assembly over the Independent Board or over them and resign they were considered by the General Assembly actually to be guilty of a disorderly and disloyal act. This in itself made the ecclesiastical trials which ensued to be a vain, public show, in every sense of the word. The General Assembly had already convicted them before any trial could be held, and this was all borne out in the very decision which later came in 1936.

3. That Presbyteries having in their membership ministers or laymen who are officers, trustees or members of “The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions,” be officially notified and directed by this General Assembly through its Stated Clerk to ascertain from said ministers and laymen within ninety days of the receipt of such notice as to whether they have complied with the above direction of the General Assembly, and in case of refusal, failure to respond or noncompliance on the part of these persons, to institute, or cause to be instituted, promptly such disciplinary action as is set forth in the Book of Discipline.

4. That each Presbytery be and hereby is instructed to inform the ministers and sessions of the particular churches under its jurisdiction that it is the primary responsibility and privilege of all those affiliated with

the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to sustain to the full measure of their ability those Boards and Agencies which the General Assembly under its Constitutional authority has established and approved for the extension of the Kingdom of Christ at home and abroad.

So this included not only the ministers of the Independent Board but every minister and all the sessions of all churches. All were under obligation to support the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., whose program and policies were being widely questioned as to their faithfulness to the Gospel.

In the document, “Studies of the Constitution,” adopted by the General Assembly, there were a number of most offensive pronouncements which sought to elevate the authority of the church above that given to the church in the Holy Scriptures. In one summary we were told:

A church member or an individual church that will not give to promote the officially authorized missionary program of the Presbyterian Church is in exactly the same position with reference to the Constitution of the Church as a church member or an individual church that would refuse to take part in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper or any other of the prescribed ordinances of the denomination as set forth in Chapter VII of the Form of Government.

To place, therefore, obedience to the General Assembly and the support of a particular missionary agency, whose activity and program in sending out missionaries and publishing literature raised fundamental questions in relationship to its faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures on the same level with obeying a command of Christ to take the Lord’s Supper, indeed was going too far. Always to obey the commands of Christ—yes; but the command of a General Assembly when the believer finds it in conflict with Christ’s Word—no. The Westminster Confession does say, “All synods or councils . . . may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith and practice. . .” (Chapter XXXI, “Of Synods and Councils,” section III) .

In another section of the Mandate we were told:

When a church is organized under a written Constitution, which contains prescribed provisions as to giving for benevolent purposes, every member is in duty bound to observe those provisions with the same fidelity and care as he is bound to believe in Christ and to keep His commandments according to the doctrinal provisions set forth in that same Constitution.

The difficulty here again is that one can have implicit faith in Christ and give implicit obedience to His commandments, but such obedience can never be given to any human agency, and this includes the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and the General Assembly of 1934, which attempted to command men what to do.

Dr. Machen issued his famous and historic statement:

Having been ordered by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to sever my connection with The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, I desire to say, very respectfully:

I. I CANNOT OBEY THE ORDER

A. Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would involve support of a propaganda that is contrary to the Gospel of Christ.

B. Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would involve substitution of a human authority for the authority of the Word of God.

C. Obedience to the order in the way demanded by the General Assembly would mean acquiescence in the principle that support of the benevolences of the Church is not a matter of free will but the payment of a tax enforced by penalties.

D. All three of the above-mentioned courses of conduct are forbidden by the Bible, and, therefore I cannot engage in any of them. I cannot, no matter what any human authority bids me do, support a propaganda that is contrary to the Gospel of Christ; I cannot substitute a human authority for the authority of the Word of God; and I cannot regard support of the benevolences of the Church as a tax enforced by penalties, but must continue to regard it as a matter of free will and a thing with .regard to which a man is responsible to God alone.

I became the pastor of the Collingswood Presbyterian Church in October, 1933, and at Dr. Machen’s invitation and the full approval of my Session, I became a member of this Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1934. Consequently, the Mandate of 1934 was also directed to me and I received one of the registered letters. This precipitated the conflict in West Jersey Presbytery, of which I was a member. I took the matter to our people and our church stood solidly behind my decision to obey God and His Word rather than the deliverances of men in any General Assembly.

Immediately, we took the initiative, introduced an overture into the Presbytery of West Jersey calling upon the General Assembly to reform and correct the Board of Foreign Missions. This overture passed. There were five sections to it. It reads as follows:

OVERTURE

The Presbytery of West Jersey respectfully overtures the General Assembly of 1935,

1. To instruct the Board of Foreign Missions that all literature published by or in the name of the Board be thoroughly evangelical and loyal to the doctrinal standards of our Church.

2. To instruct the Board of Foreign Missions to refuse to sanction policies or to co-operate in union enterprises in which the essential doctrinal teachings of the Christian Faith, and of our Standards, such as, the full truthfulness of Scripture, the virgin birth of our Lord, His substitutionary death as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, His bodily resurrection and His miracles, are not maintained.

3. To instruct the Board of Foreign Missions to take care to send out as missionaries only those individuals who believe the doctrinal teaching of our Church without mental reservation, and to remove from the mission field any missionaries under its control who have given up their belief in the doctrinal teaching of our Church.

4. To take care to elect to positions on the Board of Foreign Missions only persons who are fully aware of the danger in which the Church stands and who are determined to insist upon such verities as the full truthfulness of Scripture, the virgin birth of our Lord, His substitutionary death as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, His bodily resurrection and His miracles, as being essential to the Word of God and our Standards and as being necessary to the message which every missionary under our Church shall proclaim.

5. To give to the laymen of our Church to whom our Church appeals for funds answers to the evidence of modernism in our Board of Foreign Missions which has been brought forth.

Dr. Robert E. Speer, senior secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, sought to make a reply and I then made a complete reproduction of all that he had said. This was published in a 96-page book entitled, Dr. Robert E. Speer, The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., and Modernism. A copy was sent to every minister and elder in the Presbyterian Church whose names our Session obtained.

When one looks back over this document he realizes afresh how little conditions have changed. In the section dealing with literature of the denomination I quoted from The Way of Discovery, by Winifred Kirkland, which was recommended in 1934 by the Board of Foreign Missions for devotional reading. Here is a choice quotation, page 19, “There has been only one human being brave enough to release within himself the full creative power of believing that God was his Father. But unless Jesus’ method of making himself divine can be imitated, his achievement is a mockery rather than a challenge.” It is indeed this type of thinking that directed that there be no reference to the virgin birth of Christ in the new Confession of 1967.

The whole question of the heretical Auburn Affirmation was at the heart of the issue as it related to missionaries who had signed this document and were under the appointment of the Board. We name them: Rev. J. F. Davenport, Venezuela Mission, Venezuela, S. A.; Rev. C. H. Hazlett, North India Mission, Allahabad, United Provinces, India; Rev. P. R. Abbott, Shantung Mission, China; Rev. A. M. Allen, Colombia Mission, S. A.; Rev. L. Bentley, Persia Mission, Persia; Rev. R. H. Brown, Philippines Mission, P. I.; Rev. W. G. Greenslade, Syria Mission, Beirut, Syria; Rev., G. C. Hood, Kiangan Mission, Anhwei, China; Rev. William C. Kerr, Japan Mission, Seoul, Korea; Rev. G. H. Scherer, Syria Mission, Beirut, Syria.

Even the candidate secretary, the gentleman who passed on the candidates and commended them to the Board, was himself a signer of this heretical document, and among the members of the Board there was Alfred E. Marling, who was actually a member of the National Committee for the presentation of the “Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry,” which produced Re-Thinking Missions. James M. Speers, a member, was one of the directors of the “Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry” itself, together with Mrs. John H. Finley, also a member of the Board of Foreign Missions. This was a report which called for a complete reorientation of the whole Christian message and approach in dealing with the pagan world. Speers was quoted in the report, “While I was not troubled by its theology, I was tremendously impressed by its Christianity” (p. 260). It simply was not Christianity at all. Thus it was so evident that the issue concerned loyalty to the faith and involved the most fundamental concepts of sound doctrine and the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The struggle to place me on trial in the Presbytery was long and difficult as we sought to inform all the churches of the Presbytery, and the actual vote when the final decision was made was 40 to 3 8, with the 40 including a large majority of the ministers and the 38 including a large majority of the elders. The trials of the other members of the Independent Board, including Dr. Machen in New Brunswick, and Dr. H. McAllister Griffiths, Dr. Merrill T. McPherson, Dr. Edwin H. Rian, Dr. Paul Woolley, and Dr. Charles J. Woodbridge in the Philadelphia Presbytery took similar courses-all reached the General Assembly of 1936.

All the charges were similar and impressive. In my case there were six:

1. Disapproval, defiance, and acts in contravention of the government and discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 2. Not being zealous and faithful in maintaining the peace of the Church. 3. Contempt of and rebellion against his brethren in the Church. 4. Conduct unbecoming a minister of the Gospel. 5. Advocating rebellion against the constituted authorities of the Church. 6. Violation of his ordination vows. I was declared not guilty of Charges 3, 4, and 5.

Our defense was simple. We were not in defiance of the government and discipline of the Presbyterian Church because the constitution itself provided that “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.”

We were not the ones who had disturbed the peace; it was the liberals and the circulation of false doctrine that had disturbed the peace. In fact, we were fulfilling solemn ordination vows to maintain the purity of the church at whatever cost or persecution that might come to us therefore. And as to the charge of violating ordination vows, we maintained that we were keeping our vows by insisting that the Holy Scriptures be our only infallible rule of faith and practice, as our vows specifically stipulated.

Thus I was convicted of sin by a Special Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of West Jersey and ordered “suspended from the communion of the church and from his office as a minister of the Gospel until such a time as he shall resign from the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and shall give such further evidence of repentance as the Presbytery of West Jersey may deem adequate.” To give some evidence of the temper and the hostility that was manifest, the Presbytery even in the case of an appeal reserved “the right to execute the sentence of suspension at any time, if, in its judgment, the honor of religion and the peace of the Presbytery shall require it.” This threat of immediate suspension at any moment was, of course, removed by the Judicial Commission of the Synod.

One member of the Commission, the Hon. Samuel Iredell of Bridgeton, New Jersey, a lawyer, filed a dissenting opinion which completely vindicated our position and stand. In dealing specifically with the trial, Mr. Iredell wrote:

1. The burden of proof in the above-stated case was upon the prosecution, and in my humble opinion, the prosecution has failed to produce sufficient direct evidence to warrant the finding of a verdict against the defendant; that the evidence produced was only circumstantial and was uncorroborated; and that personal opinions and personal conclusions do not constitute evidence;

2. That the General Assembly of 1934 by its mandate, defined the refusal or failure to sever connections with the Independent Board, aforesaid, as “a disorderly and disloyal act,” and in my opinion it was incumbent upon the prosecution to specifically charge the defendant with “a disorderly and disloyal act” for failing to sever connections with the said Independent Board;

3. That no evidence was produced to show that any platform utterances or interviews published in the public press or any letters published over the signature of the defendant, had in any way disturbed the peace of any church in the Presbytery of West Jersey;

4. That no evidence was produced showing any reaction whatever in any church whatever to the platform utterances, public interviews, or letters, in any way affecting the peace and unity of any church in the Presbytery of West Jersey;

5. That no evidence was produced showing the violation of any of the ordination vows by the defendant. Again, I repeat that personal opinions and conclusions, or deductions made therefrom, do not constitute evidence.

And in regard to the major issue of the case itself, the Mandate, he wrote:

That the declaration or mandate of the General Assembly of 1934, in reference to membership in the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, was unconstitutional because “no Church Judicatory ought to pretend to make laws, to bind the conscience in virtue of their own authority”;

That the declaration or mandate of the General Assembly of 1934 in reference to membership in the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, was unconstitutional because it usurped the claim of making a law without the concurrence of the Presbyteries;

That the declaration or mandate of the General Assembly of 1934 in reference to membership in the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions was unconstitutional for the reason that the said mandate embodied a penalty for failure to sever connections with the said Independent Board without the concurrence of the Presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

What was most significant in all the cases was the Judicial Commission’s refusal to review the constitutionality of the Mandate itself. Mr. Iredell’s Minority Opinion was the only one that entered into the question and he said that the Mandate was unconstitutional.

When the cases reached the General Assembly of 1936, mine was Judicial Case No. 2. The issues involved were particularly defined with incisive language in the decision concerning me.

The decision said:

The records in this case show that the Presbytery of West Jersey, in carrying out the directions of the General Assembly relative to membership on the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, did on April 23, 1935, prefer charges against the Rev. Carl McIntire . . . The refusal of the Rev. Carl McIntire to obey this direction of the General Assembly permeates this case and is specifically stated as a proof of guilt among other proofs. The Deliverance of 1934 is an executive order of the General Assembly, issued with reference to a particular situation that had arisen in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., directed to a limited number of persons, and to the Presbyteries concerned, for the purpose of securing definite action relating to those persons.

This statement of the case made it perfectly clear that it was the General Assembly’s Mandate which we disobeyed in order to obey the Scriptures. The decision in my case had a very significant contradiction in it, for in referring to the 49 specifications of error which were carried up on my appeal, the General Assembly said:

They are drawn so as to convey the impression that the defendant was tried for disobedience to the direction of the Assembly of 1934 relative to membership on the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions, whereas he was on trial for violation of the constitution of the church (p. 16, Judicial Decisions of The 148th General Assembly).

Those who drafted the decision in some strange way contradicted what earlier in the decision they themselves had said was the evidence of the record.

It was not difficult for the members of the Collingswood Church to see what was happening. We were “guilty” before the trial started and the lower court, the Presbytery’s Judicial Commission, refused to consider the constitutionality of the Mandate of 1934, since the General Assembly had issued it.

This indeed was of special significance in view of the position that the liberals had taken in their Auburn Affirmation of 1924. Then they said that a deliverance was not binding upon the church, which it is not. Then they said that the deliverances of 1910, 1916, and 1923 were not binding upon them, and they were not, but the truths summarized in the deliverances were binding upon them because they were a part of the system of doctrine and also covered in their ordination vow that maintains that the Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. However, by this time, 1934, all had changed. A deliverance now became binding; its constitutionality could not even be questioned by the lower courts. We saw a totalitarian system of church power implemented and executed over the consciences of men. There were two great issues: first, obedience to God in relationship to the General Assembly’s Mandate; and second, obedience to the true gospel in relationship to all the modernism that had been exposed in the program of foreign missions and that was also approved by the General Assembly.

We started publishing the Christian Beacon, our weekly religious newspaper, in 1936 in order that we might reach the people with these developments. I prepared an editorial, Thursday, May 4, 1936, entitled, “We Ought to Obey God,” and drew what we described as “A Deadly Parallel”:

“WE OUGHT TO OBEY GOD” (A Deadly Parallel) A.D. 36 AND A.D. 1936

A Witness

1. Peter and John preached “Jesus and the resurrection” to the lost Jews in Jerusalem. Acts 4.

1. Christians, members of the Independent Board, are preaching through that Board “Jesus and the resurrection” to lost heathen.

A Mandate

2. The Sanhedrin issued a “mandate” commanding them to stop their activities immediately and threatening them to “speak henceforth to no man” of the matter. Acts 4:17, 18.

2. The General Assembly issued a “mandate” commanding them to “desist,” “to sever their connections immediately,” and threatening them with discipline.

A Defiance

3. Peter and John answered, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:19, 20.

3. Members of the Independent Board answered, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:19, 20.

A Charge

4. Called before the council, the high priest said the unto Peter and John, “Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine.” Acts 5:28.

4. Called before the Judicial Commission, the Moderator or Prosecutor said unto the Independent Board members, “Did not we straitly command you that ye should resign? and, behold, ye have filled the land with your doctrine.”

A Defense

5. Peter and the other apostles answered, “We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus…Him hath God exalted…to be a Prince and a Saviour…We are his witnesses…and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hash given to them that obey him.” Acts 5:29-32.

5. The defendants answered, “We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus . . . Him hath God exalted . . . to be a Prince and a. Saviour . . . We are his witnesses . . . and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.” Acts 5:29-32.

A Verdict

1. When they had “beaten them they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus.” Acts 5: 40.

6. When they had “suspended” them they commanded that they should resign from the Board.

Persecution

7. And they departed from the council “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.” Acts 5:41, 42.

7. And they departed from the council “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” And they continued to preach the true Gospel to the heathen through an independent mission board.

Conclusion

8. “And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Acts 6:7.

1. And the Word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in the land, and a great company of ministers were obedient to the faith.

Will the General Assembly of 1936 actually become the Sanhedrin? The editor of this paper is determined to obey God no matter what the cost may be!

With their pastor being ordered suspended, the congregation of the Collingswood Church met on June 15, 1936, exactly two weeks after the deliverance of June 1, 1936, and renounced the jurisdiction of the denomination, which is a constitutional right in a voluntary association, and I joined the congregation in an action of my own in renouncing the jurisdiction of the denomination also. This then led to two years of litigation in which the denomination sought to deprive the congregation of the property in which it worshiped and which the congregation had erected for its use. The civil court in its decision gave the property to the denomination, and on the last Sunday in March, 1938, the congregation walked out at the close of the evening service. They stood on the lawn outside the front door and sang, “Faith of Our Fathers” and “Saviour, Like a Shepherd Lead Us.” The next Sunday 1,200 of the 1,275 members met for public worship in a tent which had been erected on a vacant lot. Eighty-six new members joined the church that first Sunday in the tent.

As has always been the case in controversies over matters of faith, the liberals have maintained that no doctrinal issues were involved; that the issues were never “doctrinal.”

Immediately after the adjournment of the General Assembly in Syracuse, New York, Wednesday, June 3, 1936, the supreme and final authority in the whole life of the church, and the Confession of 1967, with the elimination of the old ordination vows, leaves the General Assembly supreme. Indeed, it can become the instrument of the controlling majority for the enforcement of their will. No longer can the Bible or the Confession of Faith be a troublesome problem to them. Some day the church will accept the Pope.

It must be said at this point that in the Independent Board cases an entirely different concept of church power from that which is historically Protestant was established. The Roman Catholic concept was embraced. When the General Assembly invoked the name of Jesus Christ, as it did in the judicial cases against the members of the Independent Board and pronounced sin upon them in His name and sought to censure them in accordance with their decree and their will, the church became officially and judicially apostate, and the fullness of that apostasy has now been manifest in the final triumph of the Auburn Affirmationist position in the Confession of 1967. No one sees this more clearly or rejoices in it more triumphantly than the liberals themselves, and Union Theological Seminary, New York City, which publishes Christianity and Crisis, the institution in a sense where the whole difficulty started back in the days of Charles Briggs, had this to say in the May 17, 1965, issue:

One might say, in fact, that the new confession goes down the line of the doctrinal paragraphs of the famous Auburn Affirmation of 1924, which opposed the exclusive assertions of the fundamentalists’ tenets. What was a barely tolerated minority 40 years ago is now being proposed as the official doctrine of the church. Indeed, it has been “doctrinal” all through the years! After the liberals have won the victory they have removed their masks and all the camouflage that was used to mislead the rank and file of the church, and now they openly proclaim the realities.

The Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions has continued “independent” and has become one of the great missionary agencies of the twentieth century. Its leadership has had an active part and been in constant participation in the ongoing developments as they are related to the unfolding of the struggle throughout the whole world. It is a member, along with 34 other missionary agencies, of The Associated Missions (TAM) of the International Council of Christian Churches. I am still a member of the Board, serving as its vice-president, and our church in Collingswood continues to be a great missionary citadel.

Indeed this is the story that is covered up in the accusations that are made against me today in the over-all world struggle where I have a position of responsibility as president of the International Council of Christian Churches. Without explanation it is printed and affirmed that I am an “unfrocked and deposed minister.” After thirty years our opponents think that this allegation is effective. They leave the impression that I was guilty of some unmentionable crime, or the like, and especially refer to violations of “the moral law.”

What I did in obeying God and standing true to His Word in the great Independent Board trials I consider to be one of the greatest privileges of my entire life. And, as in the case with all of the servants of God through the centuries, I have rested my case in the court of final appeal where Jesus Christ, the great Head and King of the Church, presides.