The following sermon
was preached by Reverend Todd W. Allen on April 17, 1966 at the Eastern
Heights Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia. At a congregational
meeting held immediately following the preaching of the sermon the
congregation voted unanimously (122 - 0) to adopt a resolution to
withdraw from the Presbyterian Church in the United States.
CAN TWO WALK TOGETHER EXCEPT THEY BE AGREED?
BY
Todd W. Allen
"Be ye not unequally
yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness
with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And
what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that
believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God
with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I
will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will
receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and
daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." II Corinthians 6:14-18
I want to use as my
text this morning Amos 3:3, "Can two walk together, except they be
agreed?" My text today seems highly appropriate and meaningful in the
light of the present matter and recommendation of the Session which will
come before us shortly in a congregational meeting. We have come to the
time in this church when a decision must be made. The passage of
Scripture I have read from II Corinthians 6:14-18 would seem to be a
commentary on God's Word in Amos 3:3. Paul the Apostle says, "Be ye not
unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath
righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with
darkness?"
The first question
that I would like to put before you today is: WHAT ARE THE ISSUES FACING
THE CHURCH TODAY? Well, the issues are no different today than in Paul
the Apostle's day. The only difference is that Satan
has new ways of dressing up his errors. The struggle has always been
--truth versus error; God's Word versus man's word; Righteousness versus
lawlessness.
Let us look briefly
at the basic error being promoted today throughout the churches, not
just in one denomination but also in many denominations. It is called by
the name neo-orthodoxy. A man still living named Karl Barth, a German
theologian, created this type of theology. Dr. Barth writes in such a
way that he almost sounds orthodox. But Dr. Barth thinks of the Word of
God as relative only as God speaks to you. Now he may say one thing to
me, another to you. Thus, the Word of God is changeable in that it says
different things to different persons at different times. It may have
said one thing to the Christians of Paul's day. Then the Spirit speaks
differently to the middle ages, and now God is speaking a new Word for
us in the Twentieth Century.
This makes the Bible
flexible. It makes God's Word alterable. It is easy for a person holding
this Barthian view of Scripture to be a universalist. In fact, Karl
Barth himself is a universalist. I may read the Bible and find a God of
judgment power, but a Barthian neo-orthodoxist can say, but God does not
speak to me in that way through the Bible.
"Revelation takes
place vertically from heaven. It befalls man in the same incidental way
in which he is such and such a man living in such and such place at such
and such time and in such and such circumstances, i.e. at such and such
a stage of his inner and outer life, with only this difference, that
this historical contingency of his can none the less be surveyed and
explained from all possible dimensions." - Karl Barth, The Doctrine of
the Word of God, Vol. I, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,
1936, pp. 378, 379.
Now this theology
sounds grand. It sounds plausible. It sounds sensible. But that is
exactly why it is so dangerous. It is a half-truth, which is more
dangerous than a lie. It is true that God speaks to men through the
Bible, but he does not speak a different message today than he did in
Paul the Apostle's day. It then becomes a new gospel. It becomes a
liberal gospel. This kind of theology of Karl Barth ushers in such
things as "the new morality."
The new morality is
Barthianism applied to moral values. The Ten Commandments can now be
abandoned. New codes of conduct can be introduced in the name of Christ.
This is why the Presbyterian Church was able on the Synod of Georgia
level at Westminster House on the University
of Georgia
campus in the Spring of 1964 to put Playboy Magazine down beside the
Bible and say, "let us see what Playboy will say to the Bible and lets
let the Bible speak to Playboy."
The new morality
doesn't condemn pornography and smut, it says, let us see what God is
saying to us through pornography. It says, God is speaking to us through
these pornographic symbols. God is revealing something to us. A
meaningful experience can happen in anything and everything. The
Barthian way lets black be white and white black; it makes evil good and
good evil. I quote Barth again:
"The question now in
all seriousness becomes: Why do I choose these symbols, precisely
language about God, precisely this form of language (actual exposition
of the Bible), and precisely these two or seven sacraments? Are
precisely these the truest symbols, if my soul-part ought or wishes to
express itself? Might there not be truer ones than these? … Word is not
only present where it is spoken and conceived, but where it is made
visible and acted in powerfully operative symbols. Verbum is more
than oratio. That is what Protestantism has largely forgotten.
Verbum, the Word of revelation, may be in everything in which
spirit expresses itself, even in the silent symbols of art, even in the
works of society and law. And therefore a Church must be able to speak
in all these forms. They must all become symbols of the Word of
revelation. And that means that nothing less than the whole life of
society on every side is appointed to be symbolically powerful for God.
Which of the various expressions available for choice has most "symbolic
power" today? ...Preaching, pedestalled on the person of the preacher,
now stands too much in the foreground. Therefore, less preaching! More
action and more different forms of proclamation. - ibid., pp. 69, 70.
That's why civil
disobedience can speak to the world today. That's why pornography can
speak. Society can speak. Anything can speak the Word of God under
Barthian theology. Today the Church can go out and disregard the law and
teach civil disobedience in the name of Christ, because Christ is
speaking differently to us now through different symbols and events than
in Paul's day. To the neo-orthodox theologian there is no standard, no
ethical absolute. Last week on NBC Television the National Council of
Churches sponsored a program called, "Frontiers of Faith." This program
taught that there is no Christian ethic against civil disobedience. This
teaching originates from Karl Barth's neo-orthodoxy.
When Paul the
Apostle says in Romans 13, "let every soul be subject unto the higher
powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are
ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the
ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves
damnation." That's the Word of the Lord to those who are going out
defying the magistrates. God is against those that will go out and defy
the laws of the land.
But to the Barthian
theologian Christ is above all power and today he is saying, appeal to
me as a Higher Power and disobey the laws which are wrong and unjust.
That is why the Quarterly for Older Youth from our Board of Christian
Education in April, May and June 1964 said, and I quote, "A moral law
takes precedence over a civil law. You do not start a revolution; you do
not bring in tanks and set machine guns up in front of the mayor's
residence to shoot him when he comes out. You quietly make your protest
known, persistently you make it known. When asked about it you give your
morally justifiable reasons for doing what you do. You appeal to God and
his righteousness rather than to the laws of the land. And you keep at
it until the laws of the land are changed to conform to what you believe
is right. And if the laws says you may not picket or gather peaceably
for purposes of protest, then you violate the law, appealing to a higher
law to justify your actions." -- That's what they are teaching our young
people in our literature today -- violate the law -- "And, of course,
you take the consequences. If the paddy wagon comes and takes you off to
jail, you will have to bear up under that experience. If you had done
wrong it would be an indignity, but if you have not done wrong, then it
need not embarrass you."
It's all right to go
to jail today. It's all right to defy the police officer. It's all right
to do anything if you are a Barthian theologian, and our Church is
covered with Barthianism today.
You see
the subtle error here? It is clever. In the name of Christ we are to go
out and disobey the law. Children are being taught that it is all right
to disobey parents. Adultery and immorality are all right if you love
the person. That's the new morality. Light becomes darkness and darkness
becomes light. Good is evil and evil is good. Paul thunders down the
corridors of time, "What communion hath light with darkness, what
fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? The Berkeley
translation says, "What common ground is there between righteousness and
lawlessness?" Satan is the god of lawlessness and he is gaining millions
of converts today to his doctrine of disobedience. Neo-orthodoxy is the
ancient heresy of Satan dressed up in a new gown.
This theology is
very humanistic. It would do much for mankind. It would go to the
prodigal son and make him comfortable in his bad circumstances. It would
minister to the poverty of the world and the social needs of the world,
but put no stress on the need for man to be saved, that men and women,
boys and girls are lost and in need of cleansing from sin by the blood
of Jesus Christ.
Our own denomination
is going along with Barthian neo-orthodoxy. It is clinging to the Bible
and the Westminster Confession of Faith because it disturbs people when
you shake loose from the historic foundations. But slowly, surely, the
denomination is moving away from its moorings and system of doctrine. In
1967 the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the
Northern Church, is expected to make a museum piece out of the
Westminster Confession of Faith and relegate it to the archives of the
ancient past. We don't need this document anymore that was hammered out
with so much prayer and love and patience by men of God, say the
liberals. Many liberals in our churches are determined to merge our
denomination with the UPUSA and other neo-orthodox and liberal
denominations. We are blindly following the National Council of Churches
right down the line in its new morality and civil disobedience.
God commands
separation from the darkness. Amos says, "Can two walk together, except
they be agreed?" Paul says, speaking for the Lord, "Come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye
shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."
Let me say here that
loyalty to Jesus Christ should not be equated with loyalty to a
denomination. We can make an idol out of the denomination. When a
denomination forsakes the Word of the Lord and introduces a new morality
and civil disobedience into the curriculum, is this not sin against the
Word of God? Is it not communing with darkness? What agreement hath the
temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as
God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be
their God, and they shall be my people.
Someone
may say, but isn’t it like divorce to quit the denomination? My friends,
we are not married to the denomination but to Jesus Christ. The true
Church is His body. We are to be loyal only to Him and his Word. If it
were true that leaving the denomination divorced us from Christ it would
be a terrible sin and tragedy. But if that were true for a local church
it would also be true for an individual who changes denominations. How
many here today have done that? It is no more a divorce from Christ for
you to have joined this church from another denomination than it is for
a local church to withdraw from a denomination that has left the Word of
God.
As a matter of fact,
there is no proposal that this congregation leave Presbyterianism. We
find, on the contrary, that the denomination is leaving Presbyterianism,
leaving the Word of God, leaving the Westminster Confession of Faith.
One of the vows of a
minister is "that if at any time he finds himself out of accord with any
of the fundamentals of this system of doctrine he will on his own
initiative make known to his Presbytery the change which has taken place
in his views since the assumption of his ordination vow." Now those who
are subscribing to Barthian neo-orthodoxy are not doing this. They are
instead determined to continue on until they are strong enough to make
Barthian neo-orthodoxy the official system of the Church. This is
precisely what the UPUSA Church is going to do in 1967 with their New
Confession. This is the pattern we can expect in the Southern Church.
Let me use an
illustration here. There is a creeping plant called the Kudzu. It grows
in warm months. It looks pretty. It begins encircling a tree and slowly
inches its way up the trunk. When winter comes it appears to die. It is
dormant. But come Spring it comes back nice and green and vigorous. Once
in a while someone notices the Kudzu climbing the tree. Someone may say,
that stuff will smother the tree if it isn't stopped. But when winter
comes it dies again and everyone forgets it. Then one year someone
notices that the Kudzu is green and pretty but the leaves on the tree
are gone. You go to investigate. The tree is dead! Its juices stopped
flowing. The Kudzu conquered! Let me ask you a question. At what moment
did the stalwart, strong, healthy tree die? When did it pass from life
to death?
People are saying
about neo-orthodoxy. Don't worry about it. It is just a fad. It will go
away. It can't harm a great Church like ours. We have too much truth;
too many men and women who are conservative who are committed to the
cause. But the truth is, my friends, it already is well up on the trunk.
It already has our literature covered up and shut off from the sun. It
is in our doctrine today being taught by the Boards and Agencies. The
Women of our Church refused to use the new materials of the Board of
Women's Work because of this very thing. Our Session voted not to use
the literature because of this very thing.
I would
remind you that God has often used separation for the good of his
people. Moses and the children of Israel were required to separate
themselves from the darkness of Egypt.
When Paul the
Apostle discovered error and unbelief being taught at Ephesus it tells
us in Acts 19:9 that he separated the disciples. When God reformed the
Church in the Sixteenth Century he separated Martin Luther and his
followers from the Roman denomination. John Wesley and his followers
separated themselves from the Anglican denomination.
God has always
honored separation when the motive was right. The only right motive
would be Sola Scriptura, the Word of God. This is the principle of the
Reformation. We must obey God rather than men. When the denomination
begins to go against the Word of God, we must come out from among them
and be separate. Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
And then someone
will say, but let us stay in until they throw us out, like they did
Luther. I would answer, on what Scriptural
basis do you make such a suggestion? It would have been far better if
Martin Luther had left the Roman Church before they excommunicated him,
in my opinion. Yes! He was excommunicated because he took a stand on the
Bible. He said, "Here I stand, I can do none else, so help me God!
Amen." But wouldn't it had been better if he had come out as honorably
and peaceably as he could before that happened in order that others
might have been won by his loving stand for the Word of God rather than
having been alienated because of all of the vicious and angry remarks
that followed his excommunication?
We are all
beneficiaries of Martin Luther and the Reformers of those days. Right
today in this church and in this land of ours, this freedom we enjoy,
the light we have today, is because they bequeathed it to us by God's
hand. And separation -- though forced by Rome
-- was a part of their exercise and trial of faith.
A wonderful example
of peaceable separation in the Bible is that of Abraham and Lot. There
was strife and conflict between the herdsmen of Abraham and the herdsmen
of Lot. Abraham said to Lot, "Please, let there be no disputing between
me and you or between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not
the whole country open to you? I wish you might separate yourself from
me, if to the left then I will turn to the right, or if to the right
then I will turn to the left." And thus they separated peaceably. Was
it not wisdom on Abraham's part that made this suggestion? Suppose
they had continued on. A power struggle would have taken place. And
power struggles are most vicious and unlovely.
And then some will
say, like a dear friend of mine last week when he heard of our pending
withdrawal, "Why not stay in and fight?" This friend wrote me a letter.
Let me quote a few lines, "While I am delighted to see this strong
evidence of concern, I also feel a bit sad about it all. To me it
constitutes a tragedy whenever elements of strength withdraw. It is a
little bit like trying to fight a war and having various key divisions
pull out of the line in the middle of the battle and go off somewhere
else."
Now my
friend views this whole problem in the church as some kind of a war that
Christians are involved in within the Church. Does this not overlook
Philippians 2:3, which says, "let nothing be done through strife. In
lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves."
I submit to you that
we are not justified in infighting in the courts of the denomination.
This constant political jockeying, the never-ending battle carried on by
conservatives against liberals and liberals against conservatives is
sub-Christian. This attempt to wrest control of the Church from each
other is beneath the dignity of Christ and his Church. A conservative is
supposed to be loving. What kind of love is it that wrestles a
neo-orthodox liberal to the ground, pins his shoulders to the ground and
shouts at him, now will you believe my way? Is such action ever
justified? You only drive a person farther away from your position by
such tactics.
We are to earnestly
contend for the faith, but this is the active promotion of the gospel to
the world of unbelief. This is not supposed to be a life-long contention
within a denomination. Who enjoys such warfare? Our warfare should be
against sin and the Devil. The Church should be united in its witness
and faith. I did not come into the ministry to be a denominational
in-fighter, as my friend suggests I am expected to do as a minister. To
him our church leaving will be a conservative division abandoning the
fight and going off someplace else. I do not believe we are doing
anything of the kind. I believe we are determining to be an elite corp
for the Lord with our primary function to wage war on the true enemy
outside the Church by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This denominational
in fighting is a bad witness to the world. The world gets an image of
the Church as Christian pitted against Christian, liberal against
conservative, minister against minister. Brethren, this ought not so to
be. This blunts the gospel message, stifles zeal and joy. Factionalism
is promoted. Love dies out. I certainly will not win a liberal by
fighting him. When his motives and faith are attacked he has his guard
up. I believe he might be won if I demonstrate to him that I have
convictions and if we show him we believe the Word of God no matter what
it costs; that may win him, but I cannot go down the road with him in
error. But I can separate from him in love, peaceably, honorably, and I
certainly can maintain a better spirit with my own local congregation
and myself.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO TO
OBEY THE LORD? Your Session has done much praying and thinking together
about this matter. As we analyzed the picture we could only see three
possibilities open to us. First of all, we could continue to make the
kind of protest we have been making. Withhold funds from the
denomination; oppose the liberal trends as best we are able as we have
opportunity. But to do this means we go against the Word of God in two
ways: First, we are not being obedient to the instructions and
admonitions and pronouncements of the higher courts. We then disobey
Hebrews 13:17 which says, "Obey them that have the rule over you, and
submit yourselves." Secondly, we are disobeying the Scripture we have
read today which says, "Come out from among them and be ye separate,
saith the Lord." We violate this, I say, if we believe that
neo-orthodoxy is darkness and that it is permeating our Church in its
literature and thinking. It also is certain that the denomination will
not let us go on indefinitely in this position. Sooner or later, they
will move to bring us into line. South
Texas Presbytery has an overture before the General Assembly meeting
this month seeking a pronouncement on the matter of the withholding of
funds by local Sessions.
For these three good reasons the Session cannot
recommend continuing on in the denomination, fighting and protesting and
withholding funds.
Secondly,
we can capitulate. We can surrender our stand. We can say, all right, we
made a mistake. We are ready now to support the NCC. We are going to
begin using the neo-orthodox literature. Our Women of the Church are
going along with the Women's material. We will do everything the
denomination says do. But to do this also violates our conscience if we
believe that the stand we have taken is right and necessary. We then
show we are willing to substitute the word of man for the Word of God.
We are tacitly concurring with the notion that civil disobedience is all
right. We want the Church to go on involving itself in lobbying in Washington,
seminars that teach children to disobey their parents, putting the Word
of God in the same category as Playboy magazine. The Session
absolutely cannot recommend this course. It is against the conscience of
every Elder in this church.
Thirdly, we can do
what the Session
recommends. We can honorably withdraw from the denomination as
gracefully as possible in order that we might conduct our own local
church affairs in a Presbyterian manner under the active Lordship of
Christ Jesus. We will declare ourselves to be an autonomous Presbyterian
Church and reaffirm our adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith
and the Larger and Shorter
Catechisms as originally adopted by our church, and declare anew our
obedience to the Word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and
practice.
This was the
unanimous recommendation of all of the elders and all of the deacons of
this local church. Here we stand, we can do none else. May God help us!
Amen.
Closing prayer - Our
God and Heavenly Father, we are thankful today that we have a great
worldwide
church of God;
that there are Christians of many denominations today concerned that the
Word of God is being neglected, spurned, denied, changed, altered,
polluted and caused to say things that it does not say. 0, our Father,
forgive the sin of the Church and, 0 God, help those of us who are
concerned to do that which will best help the Church; to purify it and
to give a witness to the world. And give us the spirit of those great
men of the Reformation to do the will of God for we pray in Jesus name.
Amen.