couple of things about your elders that I think you need to know. One is they need to learn to do better with email and texting. You may already know that about Jeremy, but two years ago we attempted to have this conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Covenant's, Presbyterian Church's beginning. You hear the music from the computer coming on? And so we were trying to settle on a date. They weren't real sure they were gonna be able to have the conference as I recall. We're trying to settle on a date for it and as we, let me see, I can't do two things at once, sorry about that. Let me get this pulled up and then I'll get back to my story. If I can find it, you know how that is. But it's not where I thought it was. I can find it though. That's right, that's exactly right. Believe me, it's exactly right. Okay, now we're here. So anyway, what happened was, We were looking at a particular date and I was able to make arrangements to say I can do this. So I wrote to Jeremy an email to tell him I think I can come on that particular date and I hear crickets. You know what crickets sound like? Nothing. For a good while I figured well maybe they decided they couldn't do the conference this year after all. So I show up at Presbytery and Dan and Jeremy there to meet me when I walk in the door and I say I guess you're not having the conference and the look on Jeremy's face told me they still thought they were having the conference. I said I've already made arrangements to do something else that weekend. And then Jeremy checked and he had responded to me when I said I can do it. He was still in his outbox, okay? He never hit sand on that. Now I'm gonna really pick on Ash. because a couple of weeks ago I get a text from Ash and Ash wants to know if I can come up early, which I couldn't because I had to teach at the college last night, wanted to know if I could come up early to do a little skeet shooting. Well, that would have been fun to do that. But he said, we're excited to have you coming to our false theology conference. That's what the text said. False theology conference. I didn't say a word to him about it. I intended to embarrass him in front of everyone. He probably was dictating it into his phone when he did it. Either that or autocorrect, this kind of thing. I hope that this is not going to be a false theology conference. Believe me, he meant fall theology. conference so we got some we love our elders they're wonderful elders aren't they but they need to do a little work in terms of their emailing and then there and they're texting that's right the other thing too is is that I I gave them two topics that I thought would be good to choose from. And the first that I gave them was a topic that's typical of a theology conference. You know, a deep dive into the Psalms, the flow and the arrangement of the Psalms, the redemptive historic underpinning of the Psalms. I've actually developed three courses I teach at Graham Bible College on the Psalms. If anyone is interested in taking any of those courses, I'm doing them by Zoom now, and I have people from all over the Presbytery and our mission works that sometimes sit in on my classes. at Grand Bible College Thursday nights. The intent will be in the summer of 2025, I'll do the course on the flow and the arrangement of the Psalms. Doesn't cost you a penny. The college doesn't even know that you're doing it because it's Zoom. Well, actually, the board knows about this. But if anyone's interested in sitting in on those lectures, there'll be, I think it's four Thursday nights in a row, usually beginning in late May, ending in June. If you do it for credit, then you You have to do papers, and you have to write exams, and that sort of thing. But I plan to teach that course. Again, I do these in rotation. And those who take them for credit actually get a certificate of expertise in the Psalter. So that's something, if anybody's interested, just send me your email and when the time comes I'll put you on the list if you would like to sit in on those particular lectures. But that was the first topic. The second topic was the history and ethos of the OPC. And I really thought this is the one we should do, especially since you just celebrated 25 years as Covenant OPC here in New Bern. And then next year, in 2025, we'll celebrate 25 years as the Presbytery of the Southeast. And so right in between these anniversaries to have this conference, I thought this would be a good time to look at the history and the ethos of the OPC. And I'm going to begin here by reading one verse of scripture in terms of God's providence and what God did to us. And that's from Hebrews 13, 14. Or we read, for here, this is the New King James Version, for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. The ESV says, here we have no lasting city. It can be translated either way. Talking about the age in which we live now, but we're looking forward to the new heavens and the new earth and the age that is to come. And the application of that to our church, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. One of the things that that I do as RHM is I talk to people who are interested in maybe planting a new church where they live, that have sympathies with the OPC, that are Reformed and Presbyterian in their theology. In fact, I had a conversation with a man driving here today. who has an interest, and there's another couple where they live that they have an interest, and they're praying about, do we step forward? Do we see if we can gather some more people? Do we maybe move forward with the planting of another church? That conversation took place today. And every time I meet with a group like that, they always ask the same question eventually. And that is, what's the difference between the OPC and the PCA? That question is invariably asked. And I answer the question the same way every time. We're more alike than we're different. We have the same Constitution, the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. In fact, the same version of the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms. We have a similar, very similar, but not exactly the same polity. We're both Presbyterian churches. We're committed to an infallible, inerrant Bible. That's never been a question in either of these denominations. We're sister denominations and have been from when the PCA came into existence in 1973 We work together in joint ventures on foreign mission field, in publishing house. There's a close relationship between these two denominations. So we're far more alike than we're different. But we're not exactly the same. There are nuanced differences, and some of those nuanced differences are shaped by God's providence. by what God did and what God is doing. For one thing, we have just over, somewhere over 30,000 members in the Orthodox Christian Church. The PCA is just under 400,000 members. Their first Sunday in existence in 1973, they were about 10 times the size of the Orthodox Christian Church. That's a significant difference that in some ways shapes the ethos, really, of both churches, though we're very much the same in many ways. What I want to do here tonight, though, is to talk about really three events in the very early history of the OPC that God used to shape us into what we are even today in many ways. And again, this is God's providence. What we are is not necessarily because our forefathers were smart enough to see these things in scripture and to distinguish themselves but indeed it was God's hand to our forefathers in our church. And I'm going to be looking at the founding of the OPC and the immediate aftermath of that and what didn't happen that was anticipated. And then the first schism within this new denomination, which was actually the PCA, the Presbyterian Church of America, that was our first name, you've probably heard that, until challenged in civil court by the PCUSA, the Northern Presbyterian Church, And I think we had $900 in the bank, is what I remember at that time. No money to challenge in the civil courts, and so the name was dropped, and then eventually the name, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, was picked. But the first schism in the Presbyterian Church of America in 1937, immediately after its third General Assembly, when the fundamentalists left, And that helped, in God's providence, shape who we are. Though it was a sad day in the life of the church. And then the third took place in 1941 and 1942. Jeremy's probably aware of this because Jeremy loves the history and the history of our church. But many of you may not have ever heard about this. It's called the Committee of Nine. And that was a significant time in the life of the church as well that helped shape the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and its ethos. But we can't come to those three events until we understand how we got to June 11, 1936. And so to do this, we have to go back and talk about the chief figure. And that was J. Gresham Machen. And Machen was a remarkable man in many ways. It's not that he sought the limelight, though people have accused him of doing so. I don't think that that's the case from people who really knew him. But Machen saw the danger. Just as Jeremy told you about Christianity and liberalism that he wrote it a hundred years ago, actually a hundred and one years ago is when it was published. It could have been written today. It could be written tomorrow or the next week. It was a watershed book. Though it didn't sell many copies immediately. A lot of people don't realize that. But it did gain notoriety. And the argument that Machen made in that book in 1923, which was a significant year in the history of the Northern Presbyterian Church and its General Assembly, is that Christianity and liberalism are two antithetical religions. It's not, this is not a difference of opinion within the true church of Jesus Christ, but fundamentally different religions. And that was the point that Machen made. Now when you think about Machen, Machen was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He actually cut his teeth, well I should say, was baptized, made his profession of faith in a southern Presbyterian church, not a northern Christian church, in the PCUS, the Christian Church of the United States. I was baptized in the PCUS. I made my profession of faith in the PCUS. I was ordained to the gospel ministry in the PCUS before the current PCUSA existed. The two denominations, the Northern Church and the Southern Church, merged in 1983. I was ordained in 1979 in the Southern Presbyterian Church. Came into the OPC in 1994. You'll hear a little bit more about that tomorrow. But you have to think about Machen. He was reared in a Southern Presbyterian Church which was old school. I don't know that you know much about the old school, new school debate and really split in the Northern Presbyterian Church a hundred years before the OPC came into existence. The Southern Church was decidedly old school. And there were cultural reasons for that as well. The Northern Church was a mixture of what you call old school and new school because that breach that occurred in the 1930s was healed when the two groups came back together. But Princeton Theological Seminary was a bastion of old school Presbyterianism in the Northern Presbyterian Church. And Machen went there to study theology at Princeton Theological Seminary under B.B. Warfield, under Gerhardus Voss. Danny Olinger, you may know who Danny is, he's the General Secretary of the Christian Education Committee of the OPC. If you really want to hear the history of the OPC, have Danny come sometime and do it. I've seen him do it in a short period of time and it's remarkable. He knows, he's forgotten more of the history of the OPC than I'll ever know. But Danny, he's held in his hands the actual notes that Machen had when he took Gerhardus Voss's Biblical Theology on the back of it in large print. It says, I just flunked Voss. is what Machen wrote on the back of it. But he was actually an outstanding student. He won a scholarship and award after he graduated to be able to go and study abroad in Germany. He went to Marburg where he studied under a leading critical theologian by the name of Wilhelm Herrmann. And he was also there at the exact same time that Rudolph Bultman was studying there under Herriman. in Marburg, and that's an interesting thing. A man that studied both men's letters is a friend of ours. He's not in our press anymore, but Bill Dennison, who was in our press for many years, taught at Covenant College. He studied and published on both the letters of Bultman that he wrote while at Marburg, and also the letters of Machen. He can't find any correspondence between the two men. Bultman became a leading liberal Theologian, as things were moving towards neo-orthodoxy, and Machen became the leader of orthodox theology and conservative theologian. But he told me one time, he says, people are going to be shocked when they see how close Machen came to succumbing to liberalism. He was filled with doubt when he studied that. This is after studying the greatest minds of conservative scholarship in theology with Gerhardus Voss, B.B. Warfield, professors at Princeton Seminary. He said he had never seen a mind like Ehrman's. He had never seen someone this brilliant. And he wrote in his letters, how can someone this brilliant be wrong? A lot of people don't realize this, but when he finished there after the year, he was still so shaken that Princeton wanted him to teach Greek, and he said, I'll do it under one condition, that I don't have to sign subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. He wasn't sure he could. They didn't call him as a professor, but they had him as an instructor in Greek. And they honored that, I think, believing that he would find his way, which he did. But he studied liberalism from the inside out. He almost succumbed. That made him the man that could lead the fight against this false religion that was making its way into, in particular, the Presbyterian Church in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. It's important to see how Machen became the champion. In 1923, he published the book Christianity and Liberalism. That was a significant journal assembly in the Northern Presbyterian Church, because Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was a liberal Baptist minister, was stated supply at a prestigious Presbyterian Church in New York City, and he was preaching sermons like, Shall the Fundamentalist Win? That's the sermon he's most noted for. And conservatives, especially in church, objected and came to the General Assembly and said, what's a Baptist liberal doing in state supply in one of our prestigious churches? And the General Assembly actually told the Presbytery, do something about this. Now they didn't really do anything about it, but they told them to do something about this. And at that Assembly, they affirmed what they called the five fundamentals of the faith that every minister, elder, and deacon must subscribe to. Now I think they made a mistake when they did that. But that's what they did. Fundamentals such as the virgin birth of Christ, the miracles of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the invalidability of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Christ. There's nothing wrong with those fundamentals. We've already had the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms, you see. Why come with a narrower five fundamentals? and put that out there. And what happened was there were ministers that were savvy, that were progressives and who were liberals who realized this is not constitutionally right to adopt these five fundamentals. And they met at Auburn Seminary and they came up with a plan to address this. And they had a constitutional argument and they were right in their constitutional argument. Which really, it's a smokescreen for what their real desire was, and that was to, yeah, we affirm the five fundamentals, but they're open to different interpretations, different theories of interpretations. from a conservative perspective or from a progressive or a liberal perspective. And both should be able to be in the same church at the same time. That's the very year, 1923, that Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism, came out. But what happened then, as you come to the 1924 General Assembly, by then almost 1,300 ministers and elders had signed the Auburn Affirmation. And that sounds like a lot to us. But you gotta realize, we're talking about a two million member church. We're talking about a church with tens of thousands of ministers and ruling elders at that particular time. Most of those were conservative Bible believing in the Presbyterian church at that time. The liberals had sort of a loud voice. They typically do. And squawked a little bit loud. They typically do. We see that even in our day. But there were overtures that came to the 1924 General Assembly that something be done with these who have signed the Auburn Affirmation. And they went to the Beals and Overtures Committee, and if I remember correctly, Jeremy may remember, I think William Jennings Bryan was the chairman of the Beals and Overtures Committee. You may not remember him from your history, you should from your American history. He ran for the presidency three times, lost three times, maybe that's why a lot of people don't remember him. Or the Scopes trial. He represented the school board in opposing scopes in Dayton, Tennessee. Same William Jennings Bryan. He was a conservative fundamentalist in the Northern Presbyterian Church. I believe that he was the chair of that committee, if I remember right. But what happened was, when they came to find time for the committee to report on those overtures, the motion was to table them. That is, put them on the table, let them die. That's what happened. Nobody opposed it, not even Machen, and he was there. And again, I think it was Danny I heard say one time, Danny Olinger, the only thing conservatives hated more than the fact that people signed that Auburn Affirmation to affirm liberalism was bringing discipline upon people who signed the Auburn Affirmation. or really at that time bringing discipline upon anybody for anything, because discipline's messy. And you see, here's where the secret comes out. And here's where I'm going with this and the three things that we're going to be looking at. The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America had a prestigious seat at the table in American culture. It was not the largest denomination, but it was by far the most influential. in those days. Woodrow Wilson was a ruling elder in the Christian Church of the United States of America. Woodrow Wilson was a liberal, he was a progressive. His father was a conservative minister in the PCUSA. They had people in the Supreme Court other judges, senators, representatives, people in various states that were members of the Presbyterian Church, and throughout the culture, men of prestige that were Presbyterians held important positions. It was probably the most powerful denomination in America in terms of influencing the culture. That's not all bad, if that influence is going to be a Christian influence. And they enjoyed that. You bring discipline, it's messy. It doesn't look good in the press. In those days, what happened at the General Assembly was reported in the newspapers. It's better just to let it lie. in order for us to keep our seat at the table and influence. There's no question that this was the case. Now, I would like to say that the founders of the OPC understood their Bibles better than that, that the church's mission is fundamentally a spiritual mission of the preaching of the gospel. Yes, individual Christians are to engage in culture. But the church is a church. Its mission is a spiritual mission. It's establishing a spiritual kingdom that comes about by rebirth. That's how people enter in. Where they're changed by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And seek to walk to glorify his name. But I don't think that's the case. I think that they believed on June 11, 1936, that they were forming the continuing Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. Continuing in the sense of, we're going to be faithful to the Confessions like the church once was. We're going to be faithful to the Bible like the church once was. But beyond that, we're going to carry on. We're going to take our seat at the table. Because I'm convinced, and I've heard other historians are convinced of the same thing. They believed, after June 11, 1936, there would be a groundswell of ministers and elders and conservative churches, because that's what the PCUSA was, typically, from town to town to town, that would say, we're going with the new church. We're gonna follow Machen. Remember what happened to Machen that gave rise to June 11th. June 11th was already on the calendar of the men who went. They had established an organization and they were seeking to come together to find out how do we fight this onslaught that's coming against conservatives. At the 1935 General Assembly of the Christian Church of the United States of America, there was a declaration made by the assembly that all ministers, all elders, and all deacons had to fully support the full program of the church, regardless of whether in its foreign missions in particular, liberals were teaching on the foreign missions field. You just have to close your eyes and support everything in the church. That was an unconstitutional provision. And besides that, Machen and Carl McIntyre and others, a couple of years before, because they couldn't support liberal missionaries, but they had to support the Great Commission, they established an independent board for Presbyterian foreign missions. so that monies could be channeled directly to faithful, conservative Presbyterian missionaries. And of course, the higher ups in the PCSA didn't like that at all. And they gave a directive, and the General Assembly approved the directive, that those who were involved in the independent board had to resign their positions there or face discipline. And Machen was the chairman of the board. And Machen, he ignored it. I'll take my day in court. Because he knew it was unconstitutional. They didn't have any right to bind his conscience in that way. Ministers were involved in all kinds of different parachurch organizations for a host of different reasons. Why this one? He ignored it. Carl McIntyre ignored it. Both of them were brought up on charges in their presbyteries, and both of them were found guilty of doing what? Of failing to heed the directive of a General Assembly. And Machen was not given the opportunity to say, but here's why. I did not follow that directive. It's an unconstitutional directive. And there is liberalism being taught in the foreign mission fields of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. They ruled out of order any consideration of those things up front. He couldn't even make a defense. He was found guilty. He was deposed as a minister, appealed to General Assembly. In 1936, the General Assembly upheld, did not overturn those censures that came against those men. And the meeting that was already scheduled for June 11, a couple of weeks later, in order to strategize how do we address this constitutionally, suddenly it had a new purpose. And the men knew it when they went there, and that was to establish a new church. And that's what happened on June 11 in 1936. Now, I said to you before that I believe that Machen and the others really believed that there would be a mass groundswell of conservative churches that would come out and come into the new church, and it didn't happen. There are a number of reasons why. One is they didn't like things to be messy. We've already seen that. A lot of conservatives didn't. Their heads were in the sand was another thing. But another thing is they wanted to protect their property. If I remember right, only two churches were able to retain their property when the OPC came into existence. The others lost their property. The PCSA seized their property, their assets. And people didn't want to get into that fight, so they just stayed. So when the dust settled, you had about 5,000 members. That is miniscule, that is tiny for a new denomination. About 5,000 ministers when the dust settled. Most of the churches had lost their property Most of the ministers had lost their pension funds. The church, in its church planning efforts and its foreign missionary efforts, they had, what did I say earlier, $900 in the bank? Ministers worked for peanuts. They worked for chickens and eggs in many places to be faithful in those very early days. How is this church gonna have a seat at the cultural table? Now, one way they may could have had that seat, boy, it's going fast, the time is. Y'all can't fire me, we might stay a little bit longer, okay? I'm gonna be somewhere else next week. You can fire Dan, but you can't fire me if I go a little bit longer here. What was I saying about cultural relevance? One place there might have still been a connection was Machen himself. Machen was known well beyond the Presbyterian Church. He published articles in newspapers, editorials in newspapers. He spoke before the joint congresses, the joint congress, before the Senate and House on the issue of the establishment of a federal board of education. There's nothing really religious at all about his talk. But it's brilliant and incisive when you read it and prophetic. He said if you do this, education in this country is going to become mediocre. It's going to become uniform and mediocre. All creativity is going to be gone. And he and those that opposed it won the day. They didn't establish it at that time. They did a few years later and look at the system now. What Machen said was true. It's what's happened. Machen was known to speak on political issues. He was actually a libertarian in his political outlook and sometimes voted in ways that shocked other conservatives. He had a place. When he died, he was honored by tributes by Pearl Buck, the novelist, wrote a beautiful tribute to him, though he had attacked her because she was a liberal as a Presbyterian missionary. H.L. Mencken, who was a journalist and commentator in that today, didn't agree with Machen at all on his religious convictions. He did in some other political aspirations and things like that. He wrote a glowing tribute when Machen passed away. Machen could have been a conduit to some sort of a seat, Rowling or coming in behind him, of cultural influence at that time. But six months after, June 11th, 1936, on January the 1st, 1937, God took Machen home. He had been visiting churches in the Dakotas in the dead of winter, little churches that had come into the new denomination. He caught a cold, it turned into pneumonia, and he died rather suddenly. and the church was without a leader or a rudder by God's design. This is God's purpose. And so it didn't have the seat anymore. But there were those who still longed for it, and so the first schism. What happened was is you had conservative Bible-believing Christians who differed in theology but agreed on the gospel and the Bible's the word of God, who labored side by side for years to fight liberalism. And I think you can see his figureheads of that nation of the more classically reformed Presbyterian stripe and then Carl McIntyre of the more American fundamentalist Presbyterian stripe. They worked together. They worked together to establish the independent board for Presbyterian foreign missions. But then, now you've got 5,000 of them, and they're in one church, and they have different visions of the church. They have different theological convictions. What's the church gonna look like? Is it gonna follow in the direction of Machen's vision, or is it gonna follow in the direction of MacIntyre and others' vision? And what ended up happening is at the Second General Assembly, which happened in November of 1936, that's when they ratified what was gonna be their constitution, the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, not the one the Northern Church was using, because that had been altered in 1904 with the addition of two chapters that had Arminian leanings and a declaratory statement about two other chapters, in particular chapters three and chapters 10, that said, well, you can't interpret them by what they say. It was an Arminianized influence. And at that second General Assembly, they voted to go to that form of the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms that predated the changes that happened in 1904. And there were 20 men that voted against that, including Carl McIntyre and the Fundamentalists. And they tried to make reasons for that that didn't really make sense, but they really wanted a broader church. They wanted a church that was more open to broader evangelicalism and participation with other evangelicals. It's not that the others were opposed and said other evangelicals are not Christians. No, they knew that they were Christians. But we have to be true to our theology in cooperating with other churches. So don't compromise our theology by going to a lowest common denominator. And MacIntyre and others didn't see it that way at all. And so by the third General Assembly in 1937, MacIntyre had already set it up. But McIntyre did was he said, if the OPC, well, PCA still, if this new denomination does not come out with a statement that condemns the moderate use of alcohol, I'm out of here. And they didn't. And he left with about a third of the people. So you go from about 5,000 to somewhere in 3,000. You go from tiny to tinier. And yet, the tiny er is more of one mind. But how is it going to be the continuing peace USA with a seat at the cultural table when now you're down into the 3000s, you see? This is by God's providential hand. And so the third, we'll see how I do with this. The third event, a third not quite split But a setting of this is what the OPC, now it's the OPC, what the OPC is gonna be is the situation that happened in 1940 and 1941 with the Committee of Nine. And here, I have to introduce someone to you. One of these books that I've recommended, it says here, written by Edwin H. Ryan. And Ed Ryan is key in this. There have been studies that have been done. I strongly suspect Ed Ryan didn't write this book. I just was listening to a podcast for Jim Scott who studied this issue about 10 years ago on Reform Forum about this. Ed Ryan was the chairman of the board at Westminster Theological Seminary. He was Machen's right-hand man. Even Ed Ryan had sent a letter saying that Machen is busy writing a book on the Presbyterian conflict. One letter. He got rid of all of his correspondence, but someone else that received it had that one letter. Machen had indicated to others that he was writing this book. The circumstantial evidence is there. It's not overwhelming. And certainly Ryan wrote the portions in the book of what took place after Machen's death. And he probably did some editing and that kind of thing. But there are those that really believe that have studied this issue, that the reason why the manuscript and the notes weren't among Machen's things is because they were lifted by this man. And then he destroyed all of his correspondence. I think Ed Ryan longed for the church to have that seat at the table. And I think he longed to have a place in that seat at the table. What happened in 1940 is he, another interesting individual, Gordon Clark, you may have heard of Gordon Clark, and the Clark-Vantill controversy, where Vantill actually later would bring charges against Clark, theological charges regarding the doctrine of knowledge. But there were other things that were underneath this. Clark and Ryan were very, very close. Clark was teaching at, had just recently come on, I think 1936, at Wheaton College. J. Oliver Buswell had been the president at Wheaton College. Wheaton College fed Westminster Seminary, and then the graduates of Westminster Seminary fed this new denomination in terms of being ministers and church planters that it had come into being. Ed Ryan was the chairman of the board of Westminster, and he nurtured this relationship with Wheaton College. But Wheaton went more broadly evangelical. Wheaton wanted to get rid of its Reformed influence on its faculty. The first thing it did was it got rid of J. Oliver Buswell. And Buswell had left with McIntyre and the others earlier. Well, Gordon Clark was teaching there, he was reformed, and he knew that he was probably next to go. And so he and Ed Ryan had come up with a good idea, there's not anything wrong with this idea, of establishing a Christian university where there would certainly be room for the reformed faith. And they began to solicit teachers and professors that were Presbyterians to say, when we form this Christian university, we want you to consider coming on the faculty at that particular time. And they wanted to build it to some degree around Gordon Clark, this Christian university. And so that forged an alliance between Ryan and Gordon Clark. Now remember, Ryan wanted this broader tent. Ryan wanted more impact. The church is too small. So how do we have it? Well, we ally with all kinds of other conservatives. That's how we do it. The National Association of Evangelicals was coming into existence, and Ed Ryan was determined that the OPC join the NAE and take leadership in the NAE because of the strength of some of the men that we had. We were the little denomination with the big mouth. We had some formidable men in the foundation, and a lot of young men that were coming into the ministry at that particular time. And so Ryan came up with Gordon Clark and others this idea of let's have a committee of nine appointed to explore how can we do outreach and evangelism and how can we engage the culture as a church better. There's not anything wrong with that. That's a good thing because the church had been floundering. Let's get our heads together. Let's get a plan together and let's move forward and in his plan was that after they make their report, the Committee of Nine would become a standing committee that would really oversee the life of the whole of the General Assembly and the church. That was the plan, in order to control it. And so He didn't come through a presbytery. There wasn't an overture that came to General Assembly. No, he brought it to the floor of the General Assembly. And it sounded like a good idea. There was no opposition. They agreed to it. They decided to elect this committee of nine. Ryan manipulated to get five of those that were in on this and what he intended to do elected, including himself, Gordon Clark, Robert Strong, who was my first homiletics professor when he was well up in his 80s at Reformed Theological Seminary. There were five of those that were party to what the real vision was with the committee of nine. On the floor of Presbytery, though, two got elected who were not and really didn't know what was going on. One was a man by the name of Cornelius Van Till. Ever hear of him? Another was a ruling elder named Thompson. Very bright man. There are a couple of others that were sort of not knowing what was going on, but not a part of the minority when it came out, including R.B. Kuyper. who was a professor at Westminster Seminary as well. But the committee of nine began to meet in Ventile and Thompson saw through it. This is an attempt we need to get into the NAE. This is an attempt to have broader associations, just like the fundamentalists had wanted before. And even to the point of setting aside some of our distinctives to do so. This is an attempt to form the Christian university, but there's nothing wrong with forming a Christian university. But all of these things were dovetailing and were coming together. And they came up, I think it was with nine propositions, that in and of themselves are not bad things. but they were broad and open-ended. They were not distinctively Presbyterian and Reformed. And so what Van Till and Thompson did was they presented a minority report that took those propositions, maybe they dropped one of them, but maybe they kept all of them, but made them distinctively Presbyterian and Reformed. Yes, we're going to be involved in evangelism according to the scriptures in our confessional documents. They made it explicitly reformed. And in a maneuver, Robert Shrull's maneuver, that often took place, the minority report was moved as the report. The minority report was moved as a motion, and then it was debated. And in God's providence, Ed Ryan was sick and not able to attend that General Assembly. This actually happened. So the minority report that Van Tell and Thompson came up with, which made it decidedly Presbyterian and Reformed in its focus, though the same principles moving forward in outreach and evangelism, That became the motion on the floor. It was debated and they also included in it as their last motion that the committee of nine be dissolved. And that was the committee report that was approved by General Assembly. It was approved by General Assembly. And so you come out with these propositions. They're good propositions about outreach, evangelism, all these kinds of things. But decidedly within the parameters of our confessional tradition, and the committee is dissolved. So it's not going to continue to look over the shoulders of everything that's going on in the life of the church. And Gordon Clark was shocked. And there's correspondence between him and Ed Ryan. when this occurred. They took solace in the appointment of a particular individual over Christian education that had more of their particular view. But that killed the steam of, we've got to find ways to be impactful as a church in the culture by broadening our tent to include many other evangelicals in coming together in it. It killed that momentum. And a few years later, of course, Gordon Clark leaves the OPC and goes to a series of smaller denominations, interestingly enough. before ultimately being in the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod. And then when they came into the PCA, he didn't follow them there, Dr. Clark. And Robert Strong went back to the south, to the Southern Presbyterian Church. And he was a retired minister in the Southern Presbyterian Church when he was my homiletics professor in 1976. But Ryan is interesting. Ryan, in 1947, renounced the jurisdiction of the OPC and said that Machen's movement, this movement, was schismatic, that it majored on things that were not important enough and was reordained in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. The last 14 years of his professional ministry was as assistant to the president at Princeton Theological Seminary. That is staggering when you think about this. When the committee wanted to reprint this book, there was some opposition from Ryan's family. And understandably so. His daughter is a PCUSA minister. Because they said, well, our father didn't believe what was in this book anymore. Which is true. You know, he didn't. But it's a worthy read. But realize when you're reading it, a lot of what you're reading is probably Jane Crystal Machen. And I think a case has been made. There were two journal entries in in the Westminster Journal 10 years ago, they're not there anymore. So maybe they think, is this enough evidence? I don't know. I never heard why those were taken down that Jim Scott had written, but he did a good deal of research on it and he makes a pretty strong case for plagiarism in regard to that particular book. But the end result of this, what is the end result of all of it? The OPC finally said, we're a little church. We don't want to be a little church. We want the Lord to grow our church. Being little is not good in and of itself. It's why we have regional missionaries to try and plant churches in order to grow the church. We want to see the church grow. But a realization that what's most important is faithfulness, and God will bless that with growth. And if you slip on faithfulness in order to grow, look out. And every church that has attempted that has fallen prey to progressivism or something else. You've got to be faithful to what the scriptures say and take your stand there. Yes, have fellowship with believers broadly that are true believers where we don't agree with them about a lot of things. They're our brothers and sisters in Christ. But to labor where we can labor conscientiously with a good conscience based upon what we're convinced the Bible teaches and trust that God is going to bless it. And I think he's blessed our church, and he's kept our church by his grace, a faithful church. And that's what I say to people when I talk to them about the OPC, by God's grace, where other churches have gone awry, our church, the Lord for his own purposes has preserved us, sometimes in spite of us. But he's done that, and I think it's for a witness to the broader church, to remember our fundamental mission, which is a spiritual mission. It's to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's to make disciples of the nations. Yes, we want to see the Christian faith impact cultures in this world. And sometimes it does in remarkable ways. And sometimes it doesn't. The Bible also teaches we're a pilgrim people. The Bible also teaches that we, I think the biblical theology of being a people in the wilderness is what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches there'd be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And yes, between the serpent and the seed, Christ, That enmity, and we see the bruising of the heel of Christ, and the bruising of the head of the serpent, and the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection, but also the seat of the woman or the seat of the serpent, the church in the world. There's an enmity that exists, and we need to recognize that. And the OPC, it was forced on us. It's not that we were smart enough to figure it out. I'm talking about our forefathers. By God's hand of providence. And the Lord has kept our church a faithful church for that reason. I'm going to close here quickly, but I do want to come back to our brothers and sisters in the PCA. And my critique of our brothers and sisters in the PCA, they didn't live the same history we did. Ours is richer. It's not because of us, it's because of God and the time in which our church came into existence and the time in which their church came into existence. The dividing line between liberalism and conservatism was a lot clearer in 1973 than it was in 1936. That's why there was a much larger group that came out. And I say this with great charity and love for my brothers and sisters at the PCA. And I don't think it's true of all, but I think it's true of some. They still believe they're big enough to have an impact in the culture. And they're not. They still think that and tend to think that way. I remember several years ago, there was a large group, about 200 people, that left a historic PCA church over issues within the church, not the denomination, and they were wanting to establish the continuing, that's the way they put it, of this historic church. I'm not gonna tell you where it was. And they wanted to talk to me, representing the OPC, to a representative of the ARP, and a representative of the PCA, who I know, and if I called his name to you, you would know him, a man I deeply respect, but I'm not gonna tell you his name. And I was to go first. And then the next weekend was going to be, I think, the ARP guy. And the next weekend, the PCA guy, something like that. I got sick on my way down there. I mean sick. I had to pull over and get a motel sick. And I had to call him and say, I can't get out of bed. This has only happened to me once. And they said, well, that's okay. We'll just start with the next one next week, next week. Can you come the next week? I said, I'll make arrangements to be able to come. So I was the last one to do the presentation about the OPC. And I knew they weren't gonna come to the OPC. It was very, very clear that they were not. They had big steeple itis, there's no question about it in my opinion. These are wonderful Christian people, don't get me wrong. It's what they had always known. But one of the ones who had contacted me who really wanted them to come OPC, he was a deacon in the church, he was from Croatia, just a great guy. He sent me the recording of the PCA guy's presentation, a man that I know and respect deeply. I'll never forget how he began it. He said something nice about the ARP, and then he said, I love the OPC. He said, theologically, I fit in the OPC like a hand in glove. He said, my demeanor fits like the OPC. I love the OPC. But he said, but the only hope for Presbyterianism in America is the PCA. And he said, I'm sitting there thinking, why would he say that? Because only the PCA has the size to have the cultural impact. I try to tell my brothers and sisters this sometimes, but you just think you do. You don't. The PCUSA is in radical decline. Thanks be to God. They're about to drop under a million members. At the lowest point in the PCUSA's existence, which is right now, they're over twice as large as the PCA. Now the PCA is ten times the size of the OPC. We've learned this lesson because God taught it to us, we had no choice. And I pray for my brothers and sisters that they'll see something in the OPC that will help them see, be careful, be careful that your mission is focused on the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that mission. and begin to look and growth itself becomes the most desired outcome, there's going to be compromise of who you are and what you believe. We don't face that temptation very much by God's providence because he hasn't let us. I think if there had been a hundred thousand that would have come out in 1936, it would have been exactly the same as what we see with our brothers and sisters in the PCA today. It's caused us to look at the scriptures again. What has God called us to be? We can't be what we really wanted to be. What has he called us to be? And this has established something of the ethos of the OPC. We'll explore it more in the morning with the history of the PSC, the Presbyterian Southeast. Then I'm going to give testimonies of particular congregations within our denomination in the second lecture tomorrow. And then a current update on the estate of church planting in the Presbyterian Southeast as it is today in Sunday School. And we have a Q&A later because I've gone 15 minutes over. Maybe that's not enough to get me fired. Maybe you'll let me come back tomorrow for those two lectures. Believe me, in a historical thing like this, it is so hard to know what to leave out. I just skim the surface. Get these books. That's one thing we're good at, the OPC, is recording our history. Better than most denominations. And read them. It's fascinating to see God's hand and providence in our church. You want me to have prayer and then we'll sing? Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your hand of providence upon us and upon our forefathers who didn't see what they needed to see that you taught them through hardship, through suffering, through schism, through political maneuverings? Father, we thank you for your providential hand. Father, don't let us be tempted to look for growth for the sake of growth. And Father, don't let us fall prey to little is better and demonstrates faithfulness because we know that's not true either. Father, thank you that according to your mercy and grace, you have kept our church a faithful church for nearly 90 years. Lord, we earnestly pray that you would continue to do so. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.