The church, according to the new confession, is now “to discern the will of God and learn how to obey in these concrete situations.” But in order to discern this will it no longer has the infallible Scriptures to which it should turn in faith and obedience. It must search in other fields as well as this Bible which they consider now to be “the words of men.” But the testimony of the prophets is, “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” When men, therefore, turn their backs upon this blessed and infallible Word, they turn to myths and are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).
The areas where the church is now seeking to discern the will of God, we are told, “are particularly urgent at the present time.” The fields involved are civil rights, peace by reconciliation with the Communist world, poverty, and sex.
So concrete are these situations that it is clear that the entire design of the Confession of 1967 has been directed to them. Here are controversial areas of the social world and direct political action to which the church now dedicates itself.
However, the method of ascertaining the will of God as offered at this point is most unbiblical. It opens the way for all manner of mischief of the spirit of the underworld, Satan himself. Moreover, the judgment of God follows, too, and is certain.
Jeremiah, the Prophet, gives us an appropriate text:
“Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it” (Jer. 6:19) .
The new confession specifically outlines the manner in which it is going to discern this will of God, and it does not mention the Holy Scriptures, “The church, guided by the Spirit, humbled by its own complicity, and instructed by all attainable knowledge, seeks to discern the will of God.”
Three areas are here appealed to as the source for their guidance.
1. “Guided by the Spirit.” The Spirit obviously at this point has no relationship to the Holy Scriptures. In a sense the Spirit is so independent of the Scriptures that He does not need it any longer to help the church in finding out the will of God. As we saw in the section on Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is separated from the Scriptures so that the church can use Him as a revolutionary figure. Now the Spirit is separated from the Scriptures so the Spirit can be used as a convenient cover for the church’s own dreams as Jude calls them, “filthy dreams.”
The new confession says that in each “time and place” there are particular problems and crises through which God calls the church to act. This language is strikingly similar to that which we saw in the section dealing with the holy Scriptures, for the new confession said: “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.” Now we are around again to each “time and place.” If the Spirit of God did not and could not guide the men in the preparation of the Scriptures in that time and place in a reasonable and trustworthy manner, or, to put it the other way around, if the Spirit who did the guiding produced a book that cannot be trusted, how can such a Spirit guide the church at the present moment? Indeed, it can be said, in true conformity to the Holy Scriptures, that such a Spirit is not the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Trinity, who gave us the Scriptures of which our Saviour said, “They are they which testify of me,” and whom our Saviour said He would send into the world after His ascension (John 14:26). And in clear reference to the writing of the New Testament our Saviour said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:12-14). This is the Holy Spirit who has given us the Holy Scriptures, and if we are not going to listen to Him or obtain guidance from Him through the Scriptures, how can the church expect Him to guide when it turns away from the divine revelation?
2. “Humbled by its own complicity.” This indeed is a confession that out of its own present experience, and sinful experience at that, the church is to discern the will of God. This means the majority decisions of the General Assembly, as the current, dominant viewpoint prevails in directing programs.
3. “Instructed by all attainable knowledge” which, too, involves the obtaining of the light that may be afforded the church from the pagan religions, as we have just seen, and even the changing and conflicting views that prevail in the general world of scientific knowledge.
The point is that the church has a job to do in these concrete situations. The church is to make up its mind what it must do and then use all of its instrumentalities to that end. Let us ask the simple question, How far afield has the church gone? In the Scriptures the message of the prophets is, “Thus with the Lord,” and the testimony of the apostles, “Though…an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1: 8 ) . The General Assembly will only offer the message of man, even if it uses the Lord’s name to do it.
Evidence that the church has been misled by another spirit is presented in the first sentence under Section 4, a, which deals with the civil rights problem, “God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family.” This is the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man, the basis of all the civil rights legislation. That our understanding of this sentence is correct is indicated by the next, “In his reconciling love he overcomes the barriers between brothers . . .” According to the Scriptures, the human race is divided into two brotherhoods: the fellowship of the saints, all of whom have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, and the brotherhood of the lost, who are citizens of a kingdom whose ruler the Scripture calls Beelzebub. Humanism, a broad materialistic concept, now becomes “the faith which they profess.” This, the new confession says, “breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all men to receive and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment, housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the exercise of political rights.”
This is an appropriate summary of what is called the moral basis for the political activity of Presbyterian clergymen and also of the leadership of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. in behalf of the civil rights legislation before state and federal legislative assemblies.
This thesis abounds in the church literature, Sunday school publications, and the various resolutions of the denominations that are in the National Council `of Churches. This is the basis for Brotherhood Week, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The Mohammedan and Hindu faiths affirm the same brotherhood. On the contrary, the Bible teaches that God created all men, but they have fallen and are under His wrath. They deserve death because of the sin of Adam, our first parent. All actual transgressions have followed from that original sin. Under these conditions God is the Father only of those who have been adopted into His family and redeemed by the blood of His Son which was shed on the Cross.
The National Council of Churches was reported in the New York Times, October 19, 1963, as acting through its policy-making General Board in support of the specific civil rights bill “as it was reported out by the subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.” Then the Council said, “The brotherhood of man transcends all partisan politics and the basic issue of social justice must not be compromised.”
This statement of faith supports the slogan that was heard on every hand during the civil rights debate, that human rights are above property rights. Here the legislation took from the people liberties which they had enjoyed under the reserved rights guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States, as the federal statute proceeded to regulate their private businesses, the individual’s right of contract, and the management of his own affairs. The civil rights legislation, championed in the name of freedom, actually restricted and denied to the people large areas of freedom that they had always enjoyed. This loss of fundamental liberty pertains to all, regardless of their color, race, or personal position. The new confession, at this place, is not on the side of the struggle for freedom.
When the new confession speaks about upholding “one another as persons in all relationships of life,” and then refers to employment, it is giving confessional sanction for FEPC, Fair Employment Practice provisions which have been incorporated into state and federal statutes. The reference to housing is known in the political field as Fair Housing Acts-the Rumford Act in California, and similar provisions introduced by the Democrats into federal legislative proposals. And so it goes, down through the area of education also, which means federal control and direction of education. The reference to the family involves legislative provisions relative to intermarriage. The language of the confession at this point gives to the church all the authority it needs to support specific pieces of legislation in an expanding program of federal control and regulation over the lives, the properties, and the enterprises of American citizens. The average layman who pays the church bill has no idea that the very system that made it possible to earn his money is, in the new confession, under fatal assault.
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, presently Vice-president of the United States, who was floor leader for the civil rights bill, told reporters on March 20, 1964, “The most important force at work today on behalf of civil rights is the churches.”
Thus we have a new concept which the liberals themselves have decided upon, that the goodness of men, according to their definition, can be legislated, and that these false principles which they believe they find in the Bible should be implemented by political action.
Senator Humphrey, as reported in the New York Times, Tuesday, March 31, 1964, sought to demonstrate this before the Senate of the United States. The report reads: “Then, putting aside his prepared speech, the Minnesota Democrat picked up the Bible and read the twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of St. Matthew: `Therefore all things whatsoever ye would ;.hat men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ The Senator then said: `It is to fulfill this great admonitionthis is what we are trying to do in this bill.’ ” The Senator was quoting the Golden Rule, and he and his liberal church backers were seeking to implement this Golden Rule by federal legislation. What the Senator neglected to point out is that the immediate context for the Golden Rule, the seventh chapter of Matthew, has in it, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Is the day at hand when this also will be implemented by appropriate federal legislation, to expose the false prophets, and protect the American people from them, too?
The error, as far as the Scripture is concerned, is that our Saviour was clearly speaking to the individual and not to the political power in Rome. Our Saviour was speaking of the individual and He said, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
The issues deal with the hearts of men, and their attitude toward other men cannot be decreed by courts or determined by congresses. Having forsaken the message of the Cross, the new confession seeks to remedy the evils of the world, as they relate to the hearts and attitudes of men, by turning to political assemblies. Their endeavors will be in vain and no one sees this any more clearly than the Communists, for they gave their full endorsement and their support to this movement and worked along parallel lines.
Political Affairs, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party, for July, 1963, had this to say:
The fight for Negro freedom has become the focal point, which at this juncture holds the key to all other struggles, including the fight for peace. What is demanded, therefore, is that all progressive and Left forces, and especially all Communists, throw themselves fully into the battles which lie ahead on this front.
More specifically, it is necessary, first, to mobilize all possible support for the Administration’s civil rights legislation. Its passage will place the role of the federal government in a new light and will thus constitute a major advance.
The Communists know what the liberal churches are doing to change the structure of American society and to aid a socialist revolution.
This drive to change the status quo was pointed up in February, 1967, by the Methodist Sunday school literature, Adult Teacher and Adult Student. The lessons on “Extremist Movements in Contemporary Society” included “Danger on the Left.” The danger was not the left but the failure of society to respond to the left’s grievances. The lesson said:
When it is recognized that left-wing extremism, though often an exaggerated and distorted reaction, is nevertheless usually founded upon conditions inherent in the status quo, we may more readily avoid reactions that only intensify unsatisfactory conditions and confirm the convictions on which the extremists act. An adequate understanding of the conditions within which leftist extremism is generated will indicate that the only effective response is openness, flexibility, sincere willingness to listen, and honest effort to eliminate real abuses.
The Methodists were even told…a careful study of the Russian Revolution and its causes is enlightening… Through an examination of the Russian Revolution, a lesson can be learned by the church that allows itself to become wholly identified with the status quo and thus unable and unwilling to be a vehicle through which grievances can be sought and reconciliation achieved.
The idea, as Political Affairs pointed out, is gradually to shift the social structure of America to that of socialism and then the announcement will be made that there is really not too much basic difference between a socialist U.S.A. and Communist Russia.
The handling of the lesson on “Thunder on the Right” was in another spirit. Here there was no openness and flexibility, but abuse, misrepresentation. The American Council of Christian Churches was taken as the exhibit for analysis, and for three pages I was abused as being in a position which I have never taken. The lesson said: “It is clear that for the ACCC and McIntire the term communism has no concrete or useful meaning. It is merely a form of profanity directed at all who disagree with the ACCC and its program.” The concrete: Communism is a socioeconomic political system which rejects God and makes man the property of the totalitarian state.
Thus the so-called right has to be discredited and positions and ideas imputed to them which they do not hold, while those on the left are truly the leaders of social progress.
The lesson on me closes with the question, “Why do some Methodists believe in Carl McIntire more than they do in the elected leaders of their own church—the General Conference?”