Women Ministers for the Church of Scotland
Final results have been issued as to how all the Presbyteries of the Church of Scotland, in Scotland, voted and decided as to admitting women to the Christian ministry on the same terms as men. There were 40 Presbyteries who voted in favour and 18 against, and two Presbyteries were equally divided. The actual voting figures per head of members of Presbyteries were 1,760 in favour and against 1,043. Although the majority for this unscriptural innovation is large; yet it does appear from the figures that quite a substantial body of opinion in the Church of Scotland definitely against the proposal. But the tide is running strongly against any semblance of a stand for Apostolic doctrine and practice, in the said Church. Charity, tolerance and expediency are the elements operating in these matters, to the exclusion of ‘What saith the Scriptures?’ The charity and tolerance are of a dubious nature.
Tolerance and Intolerance
Last month we made a comment on the heresy of Rev. Dr Edmund Jones, of the Church of Scotland, Aberdeen. Since then there appeared a letter in a Scottish daily paper by a supporter of Dr Jones. Twice in this letter, the writer maintains that “The Church of Scotland has an excellent record of tolerance and magnanimity.” He maintains that Dr Jones was courageous, deeply informed and a man of integrity, actuated by straight-forward sincerity. But when he deals with those in Aberdeen who ‘dared’ to expose Dr Innes’s heretical views and to call him to resign from the ministry, he reveals his personal and unseemly intolerance with those who would defend the vital truths of the Christian faith. In regard to such he employs the following terms: “A kettle of fish,” “effrontery,” “obscurantist,” “aggressive,” “self-righteousness,” “comical.” And finally he writes of them, “Their belief in the supra-natural is, at its worst, astrological and, at its best, sophisticated superstition.” Where now is the tolerance he maintained existed, presumably in the Church he adheres to? There exists today also such an enmity to the truth of God, even within the professed Christian Church, that it goes hand in hand with bitter intolerance for those who love and defend the truth.
An Evil Society in Holland
In a recent special article to “The Scotsman.” Edinburgh, that paper’s special correspondent at the Hague, tells of the existence in Holland of a Society called the Netherland Society for Sexual Reform. We give the following quotation from the President of the Society: “Sexuality must be seen apart from the morality of marriage. It is a private area of human behaviour over which the community has no authority. Sexuality ought to be a normal part of life needing no special justification, excuse or special restriction.” There is no God nor seventh commandment in the evil outlook of this Dutch Society. If God prevent not, it will be an instrument to bring about in the case of many, confusion and misery. Doubtless, there are many of the same mind in Britain and elsewhere. Without the divine light of the law of God and the gospel of the Lord Jesus, the blind are leading the blind and both will fall into the ditch.
President Visits Pope
On the 23rd of December 1967, the President of the United States of America visited the Pope at the Vatican, Rome, on his way back from Australia. It was said that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss peace in Vietnam and how to proceed to attain this. Mr Johnson, the President, has made his mind crystal clear repeatedly, that American troops are fighting in Vietnam to prevent the Communists in the North from taking over South Vietnam and going further afield after that: What assistance the Pope could give the President to bring this war to an end, we just do not know. The spread of Communism all over Italy and to the gates of the Vatican, is an evil which the Pope has been absolutely helpless to prevent. The Roman Church has boasted of being the great bulwark against Communism. What could the Pope contribute to bringing the North Vietnam Communists to discuss ending the war? In our opinion this meeting will prove fruitless as far as the Vietnam war is concerned. It has been propaganda for the Vatican, when the head of the greatest nation in the world, at the present time, comes to consult the Pope.