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TO RAISE UP A BANNER OF TRUTH

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TO RAISE UP A BANNER OF TRUTH

8 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

In the September, 1960 issue of this paper our readers were given some information about these two religious bodies or church councils — The World Council of Churches (WCC), and the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC).

The World Council of Churches is very modernistic in its leadership, with a wide variety of views and conflicting opinions concerning Christ, His life, His death, and His resurrection. Dr. Eugene Blake has emerged as the leading spokesman of this council. The World Council even desires the Roman Catholic Church to join it in the ecumenical movement. This council already numbers in its membership the Creek Catholic Church with its Mass, images, and idolatry, etc. We must judge that the banner of truth is not found in this council. We therein behold Satan, the great deceiver, as an angel of light amongst them.

The ICCC does not accept all religious denominations, and confesses blessed truths as we find in the “Doctrinal Statement of the ICCC.” They are as follows:

a. The plenary Divine inspiration of the Scriptures in the original languages, their consequent inerrancy and infallibility, and, as the Word of Cod, the supreme and final authority in faith and life.

b. The Triune Cod, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

c. The essential, absolute, eternal Deity, and the real and proper, but sinless, humanity of Christ.

d. His birth of the Virgin Mary.

e. His substitutionary, expiatory death, in that He gave His life “a ransom for many.”

f. His resurrection from the dead in the same same body in which He was crucified and the second coming of this same Jesus in power and and great glory.

g. The total depravity of man through the Fall.

h. Salvation, the effect of regeneration by the Spirit and the Word, not by works but by grace through faith.

i. The everlasting bliss of the saved, and the everlasting suffering of the lost.

j. The real spiritual unity in Christ of all redeemed by His precious blood.

k. The necessity of maintaining, according to the Word of God, the purity of the Church in doctrine and life.

And, still believing the Apostles’ Creed to be a statement of Scriptural truth, we therefore incorporate it in these articles of faith.

As we wrote in the aforementioned issue of our paper, we agree with these doctrinal statements of the ICCC: but we are sorry that we do not find therewith a doctrinal statement about eternal predestination (election and reprobation) and the Covenant of Grace as it has been “erected with the elect” in Christ Jesus before the world was made.

Presently it is very clear that not all churches and delegates agree with these important and vital doctrines, and as long as this disagreement exists we cannot unite and work together ecumenically with the International Council of Christian Churches.

I am sorry to say that the president of this ICCC has made an Arminian statement in “The Christian Beacon” some time ago. You may ask, who is this president? He is Rev. Carl McIntire, pastor of the Bible Presbyterian Church of Collingswood, New Jersey, where, on this September 28, 1963 he will complete thirty years of ministry to this congregation. He is editor of “The Christian Beacon,” a weekly religious newspaper, which sponsors the 20th Century Reformation Hour broadcast, a Monday through Friday program, now being heard on 501 radio stations in the United States and Canada, and over WINB, short wave, around the world. He is president of the Board of Directors of Faith Theological Seminary. Elkins Park, Pa., and of the International Council of Christian Churches, a fellowship of cooperating Protestant denominations, organized in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, August 1948, and which now has 89 denominations in its membership.

Although Rev. McIntire testifies continually against many wrongs in the Roman Catholic Church and this nation, we certainly would be glad if he would do this more in the same spirit of our fathers who feared God and glorified God in His eternal sovereignty. Glad would we be if he would also then testify against Arminianism, as our fathers have done, and condemn this whole false doctrine with its terrible consequences. See the Canons of Dordrecht. These fathers, led by the Holy Ghost, have never said what Rev. McIntire has said as we find in the Jan. 10. 1963 issue of the “Christian Beacon,” viz., “We saw that our Saviour had in truth died for all the world.”

Do you know what the soul-misleading errors of Arminianism are? Consider the following:

1. That the election occurred due to a foreseen faith and good works.

2. That Christ has satisfied for all men.

3. That the will of man is free, to choose the good as well as the evil.

4. That the Spirit of God does not work irresistibly in the conversion.

5. That the believers can fall out of the state of grace.

We also cannot agree with this Rev. McIntire that he is a television speaker. It is all so contrary to what our churches have declared, viz: “The Synod condemns the use of television in the home, judging it to be in conflict with the Word of God and with the confession of faith made in the presence of God in the church. The Synod judges unanimously that rigorous measures must be adopted to cope with the conformity to the world as regards television, since it can lead to nothing other than great detriment of the family. The Consistories are to admonish with patience and forbearance, but upon continued failure to heed their admonition, to proceed with censure.”

Compare this statement with the equally emphatic declaration of our fathers in the 35th Lord’s Day of our Heidelberg Catechism with regard to the images in the Roman Catholic Church: “We must not pretend to be wiser than God, Who will have His people taught, not by dumb images, but by the lively preaching of His Word.” If we are to condemn image-worship from the bottom of our heart, still more the use of television in our homes.

Modern inventions arc employed by the powers of darkness to draw our generation away from the reading, meditation and regard for the Truth, thus destroying man according to both soul and body.

It can be read in the “Christian Beacon” of Jan. 3, 1962, that the president of the ICCC is a television speaker.

We also disapprove of what Rev. McIntire writes about the Admiral Hotel at Cape May, New Jersey. He writes in the “Christian Beacon” of Nov. 1, 1962, as follows: “It has been purchased; the agreement of the sale has been signed: and we expect to see it made into the finest conference center anywhere in the United States. Nothing is just like it. It will be first class. The Lord’s people deserve the best and they should obtain the best to use in the advancement of the cause of freedom and the Gospel. We have been praying that God would give us just such a center, just such an opening. It has now come,” etc.

We certainly wish that this place would be a good and holy place where God’s people could meet at times and behold the glory of God over the great waters of the Atlantic Ocean. But what do we now read in the “Christian Beacon”, April 13, 1963, to be found in and about this old Admiral Hotel, now the Christian Admiral? It is this: “RECREATION — Beach Bathing — Swimming Pool — Fishing — Sailing — Boating — Tennis — Shuffleboard — Golf — Miniature Golf— Promenade — Bowling — Table Tennis.”

God’s people and God’s servants are invited also to visit and lodge at this “Christian Admiral”, but how can they? Is this not a place where Christian and Mr. World walk hand-in-hand? Shall this place be a Bethel for God’s people? We wish that the president of the ICCC also would testify against all that worldly conformity.

The apostle John lets us hear a different language, as we find in I John, the second chapter: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

— Editor

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Bekijk de hele uitgave van dinsdag 1 oktober 1963

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