Father, we thank you for the legacy that you have given us, this rich history and a good confession. I thank you for giving me such a godly son, the joy of our hearts. When Michael heard that he couldn't come possibly this evening, I know even that was very disconcerting to him so much that he loved to be in the house of the Lord, so we commit them to you today. And especially that Michael can get through this ordeal, which can be very, very painful. With some ease, we know you're certainly able to do this. And Lord, I stand in great need of your help to be able to teach this class. So I commit the time to you in Jesus' name, amen. I didn't properly explain last week why did I choose a subject, the Battle for Confessional Subscription. That was not my original topic. But there are things going on in our Reformed Baptist circles and distant places that inevitably, though we are not a hierarchy, and it's really important when you understand Presbyterian church history, what a hierarchy is. A Presbyterian hierarchy starts with the local church, then goes up to the Presbytery, the Synod, and then the General Assembly. And so the entire denomination is affected by what happens in a corner. And I'm thankful that that isn't our form of church polity and church government, but inevitably, because of the way we pray for each other and the unity that we've enjoyed, for the most part, since 1967, when these churches really started to form and grow and so on. And now I believe that we're somewhat under a cloud, not our church. And that's why Pastor Waldron's application in the sermon Sunday morning was so helpful for me because we're on the same page. And I'll explain that as I go along. But when I ended last Sunday, I talked about the split in the Presbyterian Church between the old school and the new school, mostly over the confession, and that happened in 1837. In 1869, the two sides got back together again, and part of it And it's hard for us to enter into this because we're very affluent and we're not facing what they faced in 1869. The country had just seen a civil war and many of their sons had died. And a lot of times doctrinal convictions get put aside because people come together in the name of unity And it's not necessarily a good thing. So I'll say up front that old school Princeton did not want to see the two sides forced together in an artificial unity just for the sake of peace and trying to recover. from the things that they had went through and Charles Hodge fought this coming together of the old school and the new school right down to the last vote. He knew there would be problems but the Presbyterian Church as this nation started to expand and you had the great Kentucky Revival for example of 1800 and even though that was a Presbyterian that led the revival down in Logan County, which is 90 miles south of here. When it came to the expansion of this country, the Presbyterians were lagging behind because they wanted an educated ministry. They wanted their young pastors to be grounded in the confession. But as I said, sometimes for the sake of expansion, and because when you're getting into a frontier where the basics of Christianity are not even known, the Presbyterians lag behind, and some of them were bitter about it because the Baptists and the Methodists were really, really expanding after the Kentucky Revival, especially Methodism. And there were some bitter things said that really on hindsight are funny. Because in their bitterness, some of the things they would say like, if there was a man on a horse passing by, the Methodist would ordain the man and the Baptist would ordain the horse. But the old school held tenaciously to the confession And the devil, still not letting up, went to the next phase of fighting against the Presbyterian old school church, and that was the attack upon its orthodoxy. And many of these Presbyterian pastors, and especially seminary teachers, started to go to Germany to be educated, and the ones that survived this really became the defenders of orthodoxy. Charles Hodge went there, J. Gresham Machen went there, but the ones who were overcome by the neo-orthodoxy and the liberalism of Germany became the ones that fought the hardest against the authority of the scriptures and starting with Charles Briggs. He was the one most notable for this. So the battle for the Bible was also a battle for the authority of the Westminster Confession. The Presbyterian higher critics had a two-fold goal. And that was to undermine the judicial authority of the Bible as fundamental law, it's moral law, it's fundamental, we are born with it written upon our constitution, and then undermine the judicial authority of the Westminster Confession as constitutional law. And they did this by a number of ways, one of them being higher criticism. And I am not at all, nor have I really ever studied in any in-depth textual criticism and so on. But what was interesting as I was studying this and I knew my sources of what I had to read through, and one of them, because I changed my mind on what I would teach this morning, After I got some friendly counsel from Pastor Carlson, I'm thinking about what would really be helpful as I go from the second week into the third week of the things that we need to learn as Reformed Baptists from the battles that went on before. And I realized the story of Charles Finney was not going to get me where I wanted to be unless I spent a number of weeks doing a church history class. And though church history is part of this, It's what we derive from our lessons is the point that I want to get across. And if you study this period at all, and you're really serious about every little detail of it, there is a book called Cross Fingers, How Liberalism Captured the Presbyterian Church by Gary North. But the full title should be How He Captured the Northern how it captured the Northern Presbyterian Church because these things were not happening in Union Seminary down in Richmond, Virginia, they were happening up in Union Seminary in New York. So anyway, one of the ringleaders in this was Charles Briggs and they started to attack, he did, saying that the Bible itself was errant. And some of these attacks you already know. You start with the book of Genesis and you say that the story of Adam and Eve isn't necessarily a real story. And it's not really that important for you to understand the historic elements of that. It's the subjects that we are to learn from that. And so the Old Testament predictions have been reversed by history, he would claim, they were historists. And a great body of messianic prediction has not and cannot be fulfilled. And Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch. And the other one was that the book of Isaiah had Isaiah for its author in the beginning and another author for its ending and the processes of redemption extend to the world to come, he had considered it a fault of Protestant theology. And what's difficult, remember I said that the Presbyterian Church was a hierarchy, and they needed to deal with this heresy very early on, but it was expensive, and it really required a theological battle. And for the most part, the people that were at the head of the General Assemblies did not want to have to do this. So Briggs should have been kicked out of the seminary. He was at Union Theological Seminary in New York. as early as 1876 and nobody had the will to do this. And this begins to be a continual problem in the Presbyterian churches until by 1900, trials for heresy were not even done anymore. There just wasn't the will to do it. And Princeton, I think, it's my own opinion, that the problem with the way they dealt with what they called heresy, which is a very strong word anyway, was to write articles about it in the magazine I mentioned last week called the Biblical Repertory in the Princeton Review. So during this time when these Heretic started to take over Union Theological Seminary, which has always been interesting to me because I've always been a fan of William Shedd and his work, Dogmatic Theology. By the time these people were coming in, William Shedd was the only conservative voice at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and it reminded me as I thought through this About the same story with John Gerstner and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as well, that you're the last person standing of orthodoxy. And that was interesting to me because I used to talk to Pastor Martin about this because in 1971, I mean Trinity Baptist Church was brand new. Al Martin was already a speaker in these different conferences, and they had this conference down at Reform Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. And Dr. Gerstner, Albert Martin, and Gordon Spikeman, who you would not know, I've delivered mail to his church, he's up in Grand Rapids, were having this conference at Jackson Reformed Theological Seminary, and Martin was kind of a little bit caged stage in 71. He was pretty bold. And he was giving Gerstner a bad time because they were fielding questions from the people in the audience. And Martin said to Gerstner, aren't we to mark those that teach doctrine contrary to that which we have received and avoid them? And Gerstner knew that if he left Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Well, that was it for the seminary. And I was Al Martin's computer tutor for almost 12 years. And after we'd have a lesson, him and I would sit down and I could ask him about any of these historical events and get a little bit more of the story. And I got such a kick out of this because the position that Gerstner was in was also the position that Shedd was in up at Union Theological Seminary. And remember, this is, An analogy, don't take it too far as I tell you this, but he says, you want to hear the rest of the story? I said, sure. He said, I said to Dr. Gerstner, how could you stay in this liberal seminary? He says, well, Al, if I was to leave, that would be like kicking your mother in the stomach. That's it. That's it for the seminary. And Al Mart replied in return, yeah, but if your mother has become the devil, you should not only kick her in the stomach, you should shoot her in the head. Well, that was Union Theological Seminary at the end of the 19th century. It was already a New School seminary, and it had become Completely liberal. And because the Presbyterian authors, good authors, great articles. In fact, to this day, I was reading one by Charles Hodge a couple of days ago reviewing the subject of regeneration by one of these New School Presbyterians. And boy, you really have to have your thinking cap on tight or you have to read it a number of times. But the problem is The articles weren't dealing with the real issues. People weren't leaving because they got into these debates. But the Baptists, on the other hand, knew that they had to take action. And a person in point is Crawford Howell Toy, who was at southern seminary, and at first they didn't take action as quickly as they should have because they knew that if you told the people who were sending the funding into Southern seminary that you had a person that was admitted Darwinist on the staff and was a liberal that that could affect the funding. But it was actually a periodical from the reformed churches in America out of Grand Rapids that exposed this man and immediately they got rid of him. and that's kind of the thing that the Presbyterian Church needed to do, but it became more difficult as they went along. So you go into the 20th century, and the battle is heating up, and the conservatives would come up with something in order to show these are the essentials that we stand for, the virgin birth, the resurrection, these are the type of things that were being attacked. And I emphasize this because what I noticed, and maybe I missed something, but the doctrine that was not being attacked was the doctrine of the Sabbath. And I thought, well, why would that be? Because it was easier for these liberals to go against the tenets of the incarnation and so on in chapter eight of our confession, paragraph two. I happen to have it open on my phone. that Jesus was being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her in the power of the Most High, overshadowing her, that these liberals did not think that was an essential doctrine and that we should have a little bit of leniency there. But I believe the reason that they wouldn't have attacked the teaching upon the Sabbath is because there was so much, even if it was formalism, it was so unheard of in the 19th century for people to say that the Sabbath was not the Lord's day that I think that there would have been more of an outcry then than there is now. In our day, we have been so desensitized by any kind of really proper Sabbath keeping and any kind of application of the fourth commandment to our lives, it's far more easier for the doctrine of the Sabbath to be attacked. But I can't find any of these liberals attacking the fourth commandment. That's just an observation. But before we go on to Harry Emerson Fostick, the other thing that Gary North really brought out, and this is important because you're gonna hear the name as theonomy starts to find its way back into our circles, We had dealt with this years ago. I remember Pastor Waldron giving us a Sunday school class of the lesson that he had taught at the Pastors Conference in Trinity New Ministerial Academy over 30 years ago. But as this finds its way back, you're going to hear names like Gary North, Ruses John Rush Dooney, and so on, who are theonomists. But I want to warn you young students who are studying these things. because somebody has something wrong in their theology in one area, learn to think through the other areas where these people have been helpful. And North and Rushdooney and Greg Bonson and so on were so solid on apologetics. We heard the definition of presuppositionalism last Sunday morning, but they really held that the Bible is self-attesting, self-authenticating. And North makes this observation that is so important, it really caught my attention. And I have to admit, I really wanna study this out further because North was asked continually, why are you a presuppositionalist? And he knew this history. North spent 30 years digging up the history of what happened to Princeton Theological Seminary. I read at least 200 or 300 pages since Thursday when I changed my subject, and some of it I had to read more than once. And North makes this very interesting point, and he believes that the reason that Princeton was at a disadvantage in debating higher criticism was because of the apologetic method of Princeton Theological Seminary and Warfield and so on, they were classical apologists. Well, what does that mean? When you're dealing with a subject like higher criticism, you're dealing with the liberals on their own terms, on equal ground. So what's the first thing that gets left out of the doctrine of the scripture when you approach a scripture that way? the inspiration of it, the fact that it is God-breathed. You're approaching this great document. God's Word to us. In the same level as those who are attacking it in higher criticism, everything is equal. We'll leave out the fact that it is God-breathed, we'll leave out the fact that it is inspired, and we'll just deal with you on this equal ground. And North believed that that's why they needed a van Thiel to come into Westminster Theological Seminary when the what they called Presbyterian Theological Seminary was reorganized and they wanted a new school like the old Princeton. But these attacks continued and Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most powerful preachers in those days and in 1924, 1922 approximately, that's what it says, he preached this sermon in a Presbyterian church that had two Presbyterian pastors and a Baptist pastor, and that sermon, as you can see, turned 100 years old on May 21st. And the issue of shall the fundamentalists win is that these people being pragmatists believe that these things were not essential. If we are going to get the word out to a populace that comes into our churches, and we don't want to be rejected. We need to say that the confession is not static, that it needs to change with the times. And in the early 20th century, they reformed the confession so that they would make the same statements about Christ without mentioning the incarnation, the resurrection, the vicarious atonement, and so on. And Fosdick was throwing the gauntlet down to the conservatives, a gauntlet that's a white glove you throw down when you're challenging somebody to a battle. And this sermon got quite a notoriety as he was very well known. It was answered the year after, not just his sermon, but the whole subject, by a young man named J. Gresham Machin, Machin out of Baltimore, Ohio, from 1881, had also gone to Germany, was also a professor from 1906 at Princeton Theological Seminary, but he saw what battles were brewing and he wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism, which was so, well, one thing it was notable because it was more of a layman's level language, but secondly, it was the first time that somebody was actually saying that liberalism isn't just false teaching. It is a whole nother religion, and the people that hold to it are not just heretics. They are apostates from the Christian faith. That book didn't enjoy a lot of sales at first. Initially, it didn't. The book that was actually being sold and kept being reproduced, which I know they were very familiar with it at Trinity Ministerial Academy, and that was his work on learning Greek continue to sell. In this book, Christianity and liberalism wouldn't sell except that the liberals were engaged in so much rhetoric. When they didn't go public, they got away with it. But when they started to attack Machen, who was unknown, they just pushed this book into the forefront and Machen started to be well known as what is called the head of the fundamentalists. He never liked that name, but that name really found its root in 12 books full of fundamentalist doctrine. And I actually had a first edition of that, so my copy looks exactly what you see up there, the 12 volumes. But it was such a mixed bag because the main editor, Charles Erdman, E-R-D, not E-E-R-D, Erdman, who was the main editor, really was himself not a solid conservative, and they're such a mixed bag, and I even remember finding sermons by Thomas Boston and so on, but it gave the battle its name, the fundamentalists versus the liberals, and Machen, because of his book, had been pushed to the forefront in this battle. And this is from the OPC website. Machen was a principal figure in the founding of the OPC for no other reason than that the Presbyterian controversy in which he played a crucial role provided a backdrop for the denomination begun in 1936. So how did we get from 1922 sermon, 1923, what were the battles in between that Machen faced? Seminary itself was still, I mean, it preceded the forming of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church by a number of years. By 1929, the weight of conservatism that was the foundation of Princeton Theological Seminary really was crushed under the presence of modernism. Now the other name that you'll want to know if you do any study of Machen is Dr. Darrell Hart because that was his doctrinal dissertation. And Hart is about as opposite to Gary North as you will find where North would be pushing for the church to be the main political element of our country Hart really saw a problem with that going all the way back to John Witherspoon and the founding of Princeton Theological Seminary. But there were numerous battles in between. And one of them, the book called Christianity and liberalism caused the next year for 1,200 pastors to sign a document in Auburn, New York called the Auburn Affirmation. With the title, An Affirmation Designed to Safeguard the Unity and Liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, it was authored by 11 member conference committee, 11 members and signed by 1,274 ministers of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. And it challenged the right of the high body, the General Assembly, to impose five fundamentals on people who were aspiring to the ministry, saying those things were not essential. And that it had six sections. The Bible is not inerrant. The supreme guide of scriptural interpretation is the spirit of God to the individual believer and not ecclesiastical authority, thus liberty of conscience is elevated. The General Assembly has no power to dictate doctrine to the Presbyterians. The General Assembly's condemnation of those asserting doctrines contrary to the standards of the Presbyterian Church circumvented the due process set forth in the Book of Discipline. None of the five essential doctrines, four of them have to do with our Lord Jesus Christ, the fifth on the errancy of the scriptures, listen, should be a test of ordination. In other words, it shouldn't be required anymore that when somebody is being tested and examined to be a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, that he has to hold to the fact that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, resurrected from the dead, and that his atonement is vicarious. Liberty of thought and teaching within the bounds of evangelical Christianity is necessary. The vision, they said, is to be deplored. Unity and freedom are commended. And this is the doctrine of the pragmatists. They knew that they were losing people in their congregations because they insisted on the things. I mentioned the College of New Jersey last week. In 1896, the College of New Jersey became Princeton University. And it was still pretty solid at first. General Francis Patton was the first president. He was pretty orthodox. But the next year, the professor's name was Stevenson, and he was very, very liberal. And so Princeton Theological Seminary also was affected by that because Patton had already gotten a name for himself, and they wanted him to be the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Princeton Theological Seminary used to not have presidents, but as they got them, the second one becoming liberal, Princeton Theological Seminary was fast going downhill. And the result of that was Machen in 1929 had met with three other really good men who would form a new seminary. And Oswald Alice, Robert Dick Wilson, I mentioned him in a Facebook post, was the Old Testament scholar who had learned learned every language that the Old Testament was translated in up to the year 600 AD. Very solid conservative joined Machen, and they formed this new seminary. The first year John Murray wasn't there, they had a pastor named R.B. Kuyper, who is from Grand Rapids, who agreed to come for one year to teach systematic theology, and then the next year they brought John Murray on board. But the one thing I find interesting about Westminster Theological Seminary was Meechan at this point was pressing for Dutch theologians to come into the faculty. That's why Ned Stonehouse, a biographer of Meechan, Machen and Alice all came out to Grand Rapids to implore Cornelius Van Til to come to Westminster Theological Seminary, this newly formed seminary. And what's striking about that is, as North says, Van Til was hired, he was an employee of Machen. Machen at that time was not a Vantillian. Well, what's Cornelius Vantill known for? Well, we were talking about presuppositional apologetics. And Vantill had also taught at Princeton. And the person that had such an influence on him was Gerhardus Voss. had died a few years before this. But the other person that you would ask, well, why didn't he come to Westminster Theological Seminary, was Benjamin Warfield. He knew that it was over for Princeton Theological Seminary. So why didn't he go to Westminster? And this is something to think about. He had an invalid wife, and Westminster Theological Seminary was in no position to be able to give him the medical funds and insurance that he needed, so he stayed there for his wife, but the saying goes, when Warfield's body was carried out, that was it for the seminary. But I say that Cornelius Van Till had really shown in presuppositional apologetics the authentic nature of the scripture, self-authenticating, self-attesting, and he started to show where the apologetic method of Princeton Seminary was not fit for the battles that they were facing. And a couple of the founders of the seminary passed on very early on. Machen passed away in March of 1937. He was out in North Dakota trying to get funding for the seminary. And also Robert Dick Wilson was only there one year, and he passed away. But I just want to mention this in passing, and then I'll open it up, because You know, I'm interested, of course, in what anything Pastor Waldron or you students have to say about this. And that is that what I took away from this, I knew the church history already. I had taught the life of Machen and Vandeel when I attended Harbor Reform Baptist Church. It wasn't called that. In the year 2009, 2010, I knew this history. But I believe, and Pastor Waldron can correct me if I'm wrong, he was there in the early days, that we have a great amount that we have gained by the theologians of Westminster Theological Seminary, John Murray, Cornelius Van Til, Edward J. Young, and so on, that I really believe is that the foundation of some of the things that we hold dear. And we are a seminary church. And what I see, and I know I'm naive, I'm trying to follow this from a distance, but I believe that some of the things that are so important to us in the early days of starting going back to training ministerial academy, Grand Rapids School of Theology, and now our seminary here are under attack. And it is inconceivable to me, and I may be naive, I'm a layman, how it is that the thing that is under attack is a self-authenticating, self-attesting nature of Scripture. And we're hearing things like, as our pastor mentioned, the need to be a Christian Platonist, the need to go back to classical apologetics, the need to more understand natural theology, and finally, the need to be experts in Thomas Aquinas. And so I emphasize that part of Princeton Theological Seminary, and especially North's view of it. And he had spent 30 years studying it. And North was very much of Antillian, if I could call him that, Greg Bonson, Rush Dooney, and so on. And his convictions of the necessity for presuppositional apologetics was further grounded and further became a priority by being a student of what happened to Princeton Theological Seminary. And to end this part of the story, Machen eventually was brought up in trial, which is amazing because the liberals that he had been warring against gained the ascendancy in the General Assembly. And when Robert Dick Wilson and Machen started to point out that our foreign missionaries were also liberal, including Pearl Buck, you may have heard that name, who was in China, They continued to sound an alarm and the last people who would have stood up for him were gone. Machen was brought up for trial and that's why he said, we just have to form another denomination. And they had to rename it because it was too close to the denomination that was in presence. So they named it the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And so many of the people in that particular denomination and their writings are very, very helpful to us. But I admit in this particular regard, I may be missing something. So if, like Pastor Waldron, if you have anything on what you feel about this history, I'd love to hear what you have to say or some of you students. answer directly what you're talking about. Yeah, I do think that there was a defect in Princeton's method of defending the faith. And I've read Warfield, who was the last representative of that method, of a long line of representatives at Princeton. And if you read terribly dispensably, Bible was probably the Word of God. The Word of God probably was really the Word of God. Amen. And because of his evidential and reclassical approach, that the Word of God could not be shown to be absolutely the Word of God. It was only at best, at best it was a high probability that it was. And I think that kind of illustrates what you're saying. a good bit because of their methodology couldn't go beyond that. The other thing I'll say is earlier in the lesson, you mentioned higher criticism. I just want to make a distinction. Higher criticism is not equal to textual criticism. You can say this, Tom, but I'm afraid somebody might get this impression. There is an important distinction between higher criticism and lower criticism, or what we practice as textual criticism. Higher criticism does not assume the inerrancy of the Bible. Therefore, it assumes the right to criticize the Bible assumes the inspiration of the Word of God, and is simply seeking to identify in the multitude of manuscripts the best possible text, and the correct text of the Word of God. And in the case of a few important textual variants that are there, but it assumes the inspiration of the Word of God. So please make distinction in your mind between higher criticism and lower Right, and I meant to say that Warfield himself used lower criticism. I wasn't saying anything about that. Go ahead, Austin. One practical application I think we can make line of this study is that adopting one of these doctrines that's outside of the scope of our confessional subscription oftentimes brings an abrupt end to friendships that we've had with other brothers in the past on our doctoral commitment. You mentioned Crawford Toy. And Tom Nettles tells the story of Broadus and Boyce bringing Crawford Toy to the train station to leave to Harvard, where he would take up his teaching position with Darwinian evolution. And Broadus writes in Boyce, his biography, throwing his left arm around Toy's neck. Dr. Boyce lifted the right arm before him and said, in a passion of grief, oh, Toy, I would freely give that right arm to be cut off if you could be right where you were five years ago and stay right there. That's so interesting. Oftentimes, when people adopt doctors outside of confession and take new positions, it does bring an abrupt end By the way, if you didn't recognize, that's Van Til teaching class. And there's something almost entertaining about our Dutch teachers. Van Til, if you tried to tune him out, he'd ping you with a piece of chalk on the forehead. You needed to pay attention. Go ahead, Blake. You mentioned the book Christianity and Liberalism by Nation, and we still have, Dr. Walton has students read that for modern church history, and I'm great for that class, and one of the observations that they often bring out is what I myself felt when I read it, is it feels like it was written yesterday. The same issues that were happening a few years ago are still there, that divide is still present, and they're important issues for us to understand, and it's a pretty accessible book. Right, and it's amazing how many of these books are now coming out in Kindle, and they're quite inexpensive. I just got Stonehouse Life of Machen, which is over 500 pages, for $3. This is like points a lot of theological errors that we're seeing today. I'm recognizing right here that there's been a significant history of misusing And that's really important, you know, as a mom and an educator for children. Obviously, probably not at this level when they're five years old. But it is really important to speak to your children as early as possible. God's word is true. God's word is God's word. It is always true. It is true today. It is true tomorrow. start there, and then when they get to high school, then you can take your class. One thing I want to say before I close in prayer, and this should be self-evident, that do not, do not take it for granted here that we're holding the same things dear confessionally that I believe that we have all along. So I think it's very, very important You must, you must pray for this seminary because it's the local congregation that's holding our pastor to an account. There's no general assembly of the Reformed Baptist churches. So we have to listen if we hear anything that's going out that is being taught from this pulpit where a red flag goes up. But I can say, and I've known Dr. Waldron a long, long time, I mean, I knew him at least from 1985, and I'm so thankful, and especially was it helpful for me again to hear on last Sunday morning his application about presuppositionalism. Don't take your pastor for granted and be thankful for the legacy that you are being given here, because I'm telling you in all try to establish that next week, when you hear of sister churches that out of all of the paragraphs in our confession say, well, there are nine of them we just don't agree with anymore. I try to emphasize that confession isn't inspired, but it is a standard that has such a rich history before it from the Canons of Dorton, the Westminster Confession, and the First London Confession, that we really want to be careful when we hear people say, I just reject that part of our confession, and to the paragraphs in Chapter 26 on the Sabbath, for example. But I'm already on it. Go ahead. They talk very highly of the Westminster Confession. The church today, John Calvin Presbyterian Church, but all the while, they're denying or budging on very central core doctrines. Of course, you know what the PCA is like today. Now, the same church is posting on Facebook about the rainbow flags. But the confession is no longer static. We need to change it to accommodate to the times, and that's why they can say they're confessional and mean a different thing than what we mean. when we say that is the standard for the doctrine of our church. And with that, I better close. Holy Father, I have to be thankful for these people, and especially for those who have been leading us faithfully even before this church was formed, and we commit these professors to you. Because more and more, they're going to hear the enemy's hiss. and there are people that are gonna have a falling out from us, but may we be like Machen and have a dogged determination to uphold the Bible, is your word we ask in Jesus' name, amen.