Reflections on the 80th G A of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

The 80th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church adjourned on the 10th and the reports are aglow!!

We continue to praise and thank God for all the particular integralities of His everlasting righteousness and providence.


We are thankful for the ministry of the outgoing GA Moderator, the prolific Rev Dr Tony Curto; who currently serves on the faculty of the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As well as the man to whom the moderatorial gavel has been passed, the Rev Dr Jeff Landis. This California man received his Doctor of Ministry degree from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida and serves as the pastor of the Covenant Presbyterian Church in San Jose. I cannot forget about the Rev George Cottendon. Rev Cottendon (M.Div. '67) serves on the Board of Trustees for the Westminster Theological Seminary and will continue his calling as the OPC Stated Clerk. Indeed, we are blessed with strong mortal vessels and examples throughout the centuries to our age whose testimonies exemplify commitment to God's Word revealed to the elect and to the Great Commission.

Overall, the "report card" looks good:

• The OPC continues to grow (its ranks have doubled since the late 1980's)
• Morning worship attendance is up
• Sunday school attendance has increased
• General offerings have seen an increase

                          *These are based on reports submitted by each presbytery*

How do we explain our continued growth and stability? In a nutshell, it is because of our implacable dedication to traditional beliefs outlined in Scripture......SOLA SCRIPTURA

1. The absolute sovereignty of God.

In creation, life, death, election, reprobation etc., God's absolute sovereignty is-just that-absolute. Nothing goes on that is exclusive of the Father's knowledge, control or sovereign will. We cling to His providence not primarily, pre-eminently or predominantly.........................

                               We cling to it...period!!!!!


Haughtiness, arrogance and spiritual pride are traits that have poisoned our faith here and in Europe, haven't they? We must guard against these and be mindful only of the Father's blessings and, if provoked, His just wrath.

In the great work An Earnest Exhortation To the Inhabitants of New-England, Rev Increase Mather gave the elect a most timeless, transcendent admonition:

As the Lord begins to deliver us, we are apt to forget the fears and sorrows which have been upon us, but that is the ready way to greater Calamity. Verily if we lay not these things to heart, there is cause to fear that those other Judgments (which nothing but wonderfull mercy hath saved us from) even Famine and Pestilence are not far off. We have seen the Lord come riding amongst us upon his Red horse, if this awaken us not, how can we expect other, but that ere long we shall behold a Black Horse, yea and a Pale Horse, and his name that shall sit thereon is Death.

2. The Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We rely not on man's influence, accreditation or the ornithological headings engendered to "get us over". Apart from the transforming power of the Gospel and the effusion of His Sacred Blood on a hilltop called Golgotha, salvation isn't happening...It's that pure and simple.




Our happiness consists in due subordination and conformity to Christ, and therefore let us labor to carry ourselves as He did to His Father, to His friends, to His enemies. In the days of His flesh He prayed whole nights to His Father. How holy and heavenly-minded was He, that took occasion from vines, stones and sheep to be heavenly-minded, and when He rose from the dead His talk was only of things concerning the kingdom of God, in His converse to His friends. He would not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed; He did not cast Peter in the teeth with his denial, He was of a winning and gaining disposition to all; for His conduct to His enemies, He did not call for fire from heaven to destroy them but shed many tears for them that shed His blood. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matt. 23:37), and upon the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). So that if we will be minded like unto Christ, consider how He carried Himself to His Father, to His friends, to His enemies, yea to the devil himself. When He comes to us in wife, children; friends, etc. we must do as Christ did, say to Satan, "Get thee hence," and when we deal with those that have the spirit of the devil in them, we must not render reproach, but answer them, "It is written."
Richard Sibbes

3. The inerrancy of Scripture

The elect are reminded in Calvin's Institutes that the 'Witness of the Spirit is necessary to make certain the authority of Scripture'. We hold the Bible to be not the final authority, but the only authority. This authority, we hold, extends to life as a whole. Not just during the observance of the Lord's Day. 

The Word of God must be Read and Heard with Diligence that so you may arrive to the Knowledge that is needful for you. The Catechisms in which you have the Word of God fitted for your more early Apprehension of it must be diligently Studied. Unto all the other Means of Knowledge, there must be added, Humble and Earnest Supplications before the Glorious Lord, You must cry to God for Knowledge, and lift up your Voice to Him for Understanding; Prefer it before Silver, Before any Earthy Treasures.
 Rev Cotton Mather

4. The deliberate and absolute subordinancy of the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity to the Scriptures is the only perichoresis.

In plainer language, our approach to the confessions is dictated by the Bible-not the other way around. Detractors have argued that subscriptionism to the creeds and confessions is antiquated, if not tantamount to idolatry. This is a deliberate and disingenuous attempt by the enemies of the faith to marginalize. Indeed, if one prides oneself on memorizing them merely for posterity, the ends are desultory, to say the least! The great Covenanter minister, the Rev David Steele (of Steelite fame), explains it this way:

Even our doctrinal standards we received from our fathers through history alone. Now, I desire the reader to see with his own mental eye, that our faith in the genuineness of these doctrinal standards rests solely on human testimony: that is, we believe on the evidence of the generations who have lived before us, that our Confessions, Covenants, etc., are true copies of those documents. But our belief so far is not saving faith ­ "the faith of God's elect." Having these documents handed down to us through history alone, then we compare them with the Bible. Can we perceive their agreement or disagreement without reasoning? No, surely. Well now, if two persons at first sight take different views of any doctrine, will they not at once enter into discussion, and their future agreement result from honest argument; yet neither their agreement in believing the symbols of their profession to be true copies; no, nor even their belief that a certain doctrine is scriptural, constitutes "the faith of God's elect;" but it does constitute that kind of faith or agreement by which they can "walk together." I hope the reader can now perceive that "the faith of God's elect" is not the condition of fellowship in the visible church, and that the visible is distinct from the invisible church. There are few delusions more prevalent and popular than the old error revived, that "assurance of grace and salvation is essential to saving faith;" and that it is, or ought to be one of the terms, or in fact the only condition of fellowship in the visible church

The only legitimate objective in adherence to or "celebration" of the standards depends singularly in the moral truths rooted in the Word of God they expound on. Appreciation of all the above depends mortally on God's discernment, not ours.


5. The Presbyterian form of government.

This great Scottish Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, Rev Samuel Rutherford, was a champion of what is now commonly referred to as the "Divine Right of Presbyterianism". This is the belief that our form of government if specifically mandated in God's Word. That it had a profound impact on the development and progression of both America and Mother England is beyond dispute. It has been argued from the Cromwellian era to ours that, devoid of Presbyterian mediation, the tumult of the 1640's in the mother country would have raged ten fold!

 

That being said, we tend to shun verbiage like " He moved up from deacon to elder". We tend not to refer to the GA as the "highest" level of our church government, or to the GA Moderator as the "highest ranking church officer". Why? That kind of phraseology tends to diminish the sanctity inherent of our governmental construct by tacitly conveying an ascending chain of command. A potentially corruptible prelatic system that threatens a divine right of a frightfully different and godless type and invokes misnomers of infallibility at its helm. Indeed, the very type that was railed against by

• Knox and the Protestant Lairds in Scotland
• Thomas Cartwright and Christopher Goodman in England
• The martyr Guido de Bres in the Netherlands 
• John Calvin and Theodore Beza in Protestant Rome!

The Synod of Philadelphia convened in Baltimore in 1843. It was there that the Rev Robert J Breckenridge (elected GA Moderator, 1841) reaffirmed the findings of the Westminster assembly of Divines in 1640's England when he held that
"Presbyterian government is not a hierarchy, but a commonwealth".

..............and the list goes on.........to our day.

6. The company we keep

In Pennsylvania, it's not typical to look skyward and see a turkey vulture traveling south for the winter in formation with a flock of Canada geese, now is it??? I've been a ridge runner in the Appalachian foothills for many years and have never seen it.

 Along these lines, you'll not observe a leopard feeding on a wildebeest, zebra or Cape Buffalo with a pride of lions in Africa. Lots of luck trying to locate a Rottweiler hunting elk, deer or musk ox with a pack of timber wolves in Yellowstone. Yep, the old "birds of a feather" adage is no less applicable corporately than personally. You are indeed judged by the company you keep!

For this reason, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church maintains cordial ecumenical relations only with Reformed bodies who are- exactly that- Reformed.

7. Our Worship

This is a replica of the painting by Sir David Wilkie. It depicts John Knox preaching before the Lords of the Congregation of Jesus Christ; which were the Protestant nobles who supported him. In an earlier, rather spirited debate with a Romish priest over what is appropriate for worship and what isn't, he articulated the values for our worship. The OPC has been consistent in this aim.

"It is not enough that man invents a ceremony and then gives it a signification, according to his pleasure. For so might the ceremonies of the Gentiles, and this day the ceremonies of Mohammed, be maintained. But if that anything proceeds from faith, it must have the word of God for the assurance. For you are not ignorant, that 'faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God' (Rom. 10:17). Now, if you will prove that your ceremonies proceed from faith, and do please God, you must prove that God in expressed words has commanded them; or else you shall never prove that they proceed from faith, nor yet that they please God; but that they are sin, and do displease him, according to the words of the apostle, 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin' " (Rom. 14:23).

                           The Rev Dr. J Gresham Machen

“It is true that historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world; it resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass; it brings the individual face to face with his God.”  

                                                           
Through all these ends and aims, the OPC remains committed to Biblical Presbyterianism as it ought to be. For this, we take no credit. All of the glory is due to God in Christ.

                                   Come grow with us!!!