The National Presbyterian Church which recently separated from the modernistic Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., adopted at its first General Assembly in December, 1973, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. The Confession of Faith adopted is the one adopted in America in 1789, in which the chapter and sections dealing with the Civil Magistrate are changed. The National Presbyterian Church has made a further departure from the Confession by deleting the reference to the Pope as the Anti-Christ.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America has also adopted these revisions on the Chapter and Sections dealing with the Civil Magistrate, and has left Section VI, chapter XXV an open question as far as the church’s terms of subscription are concerned. “Despite the professed loyalty of the Westminster Theological Seminary, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and Presbyterian Guardian to the Westminster Confession of Faith,” writes the late Rev. Donald Beaton, “we are sure it will amaze our readers, to learn that in the doctrinal Constitution of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, clause or paragraph VI of chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession of Faith is left an open question, as far as that Church’s terms of subscription are concerned. We refer to that part of the Confession which declares concerning the Pope that he is “that anti-Christ, that man of sin, and Son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.” A Church making such a grave omission scarcely merits the name of Protestant, according to the original connotation of that term. Personally, the present writer believes sincerely that the attitudes of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to this part of the Westminster Confession of Faith is the fruit of lack of spiritual discernment, due to spiritual or intellectual pride, in imagining themselves superior in their power of Biblical interpretation relative to this particular point, to the pious, profoundly spiritual and scholarly theologians who framed the Westminster Confession of Faith, and that the Most High has consequently punished the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and its evangelical periodical by giving them over, in this respect to spiritual blindness. If this view is correct, as we firmly believe it is, then that Church and that periodical will not be honoured, failing correction of their error and repentance in witnessing against the most formidable obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in the world — Romanism, “the masterpiece of Satan.” As it is generally acknowledged that, with the possible exception of the Reformers at the Reformation period, and the body of godly and scholarly men who produced that unrivalled translation, the 1611 Authorised Version of the Scripture, there has not been known since the time of Pentecost a body of theologians more endowed with spiritual power, depth and discernment, from on high, than the pious, spiritual, and scholarly framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith; does it not appear like gross presumption on the part of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church thus, by implication, to correct the, to them debatable, convictions of these divinely highly-favoured theologians? The most deeply spiritual Christians of the present day might, with propriety, be called light-hearted compared to these theologians.”
To excuse oneself by saying that the confessed view on this particular point is merely on interpretation, is inconsistent, as it is an integral part of the Westminster Confession of Faith, binding upon all who subscribe to it as the confession of the individual subscriber. To subscribe only those parts of the Westminster Confession of Faith which suit our own notions of propriety, while still claiming unqualified, unequivocal heirship of, and admiration for, confessional doctrines, savours far too much of the unscrupulously-unseemly tactics of the Modernists relative to the Bible — they must needs pose as Christians, while discarding those parts of the inspired, infallible Word of God, which they in their lamentable spiritual blindness, think should not be there. The seeming subterfuge that the Westminster Confession of Faith, being after all, a humanly framed document, though based on the Bible, one could not be expected to endorse every detail of it, as one knows of no book composed by man to which one could not yield such endorsement, may seem not only plausible but an incontrovertible argument to some, but in this particular case it does not carry conviction. If the Papal System, culminating in the blasphemous doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, when he speaks ex-cathedra on matters of faith and morals — an attribute and prerogative peculiar to the Godhead — is not, after all, the Scriptural Anti-Christ, we fail absolutely to conceive, how any other system that can ever arise and develop, will coincide so exactly in minute detail, with the inspired Biblical description. We can only conclude that “blindness in part is happened” to those who believe otherwise.” (The Free Presbyterian Magazine, March, 1941).
The Rev. F. S. Leahy in his book, “The Roman Anti-Christ,” says: “The word antichristos’ is composed of kristos meaning anointed (Christ), and the prefix anti. “Anti” means against, also instead of or in place of. When prefixed to the name of an individual it indicates an agent who assumes that individual’s place, and at the same time acts in opposition to him. Thus Rome herself speaks of Antipopes. Antichrist, therefore means one who pretends to be the vicar of Christ, and assumes to act in His name, but who at the same time is His rival and greatest enemy.
“Alarmed by the fact that the Reformers were pointing to the Pope as the Man of Sin, the Jesuit Ribera at the end of the sixteenth century invented, or at least propagated futuristic views of the Anti-Christ and pointed to a solitary infidel Antichrist who would appear in the dim future. This is largely the Romanist view today. — Ribera’s view soon infected the High Church party. J. M. Darby caught the contagion and finally Dr. C. J. Scofield swallowed the Jesuit’s pill. Thus Ribera proceeded beyond the wildest dreams, for the attention of thousands of Protestants became deflected from the Papacy, a future Anti-Christ was looked for, and the historic Protestant view handed down by the Reformers was despised by many. These are the hard facts of history. A Protestantism saturated with Ribera’s Futurism is not the Protestantism of the Reformers nor is it feared by the Papacy.”
With reference to Paul’s description of Antichrist in II Thess. 2: 3-8, Dr Charles Hodge says, “This portrait suits the Papacy so exactly that Protestants have rarely doubted that it is the Antichrist which the Apostle intended to describe.” W.M.