The Non-Anti-Semitic Denomination of the Suspected Poway Synagogue Assassin

Gary North - April 28, 2019

I'm going to deviate from my usual policy of not publishing anything on a Sunday.

We read this about the accused shooter, John T. Earnest. This is from USA Today.

Earnest is a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, said Pastor Zachary Keele, who leads the Escondido church. "It's a deplorable act of wickedness," said Keele. "I'm still in shock... I'm kind of numb."

The Escondido church meets at the chapel of Westminster Theological Seminary, known as Westminster West. In 1963-64, I attended Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. This was before the separate campus was built in California. In the late 1960's, I belonged to the Long Beach Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I am familiar with the basic theology of the denomination. I wrote a 1,000-page history of the origin of the denomination in 1936: Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (1996).

The denomination is not dispensational. It is not pro-Israel. It takes no position on the modern State of Israel. There is no explicit teaching on the role of the State of Israel in the future of the church (eschatology). Generally, the denomination is amillennial, which is consistent with most continental European eschatology: Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Calvinistic. There is no statement in the church's official documents that God is going to set up a worldwide kingdom in history, either in person (premillennialism) or through worldwide Christian conversion (postmillennialism). There are pastors who hold to these views, but amillennialists dominate.

The general focus of their amillennialist view of the kingdom of God is that it is a personal matter, a church matter, and a family matter. It does not teach that it is a civil matter. This is especially true of the Westminster West campus. It is famous for holding Luther's two-kingdoms view: confessional church, non-confessional state.

The denomination is a relatively small one: 31,000 members in 270 congregations.

The founder of the denomination, J. Gresham [GRESSum] Machen [MAYchen] was a careful student of ancient Greek and was the acknowledged intellectual leader of the anti-liberal Protestant resistance movement in the United States from 1923 until his death on January 1, 1937. There was nothing anti-Semitic about him or about the professors associated with the seminary he founded, Westminster Seminary, in 1929. He was a classical liberal in politics and economics.

I have known several of the OPC pastors and retired pastors in the San Diego area for well over 50 years. They are conservative theologically and politically, but they have had little to say about the State of Israel or Judaism. This is simply not on their agenda.

I do not recall ever hearing a sermon on the modern State of Israel or on Judaism in general in the years that I spent in Orthodox Presbyterian Churches. My memories have faded over the last 50+ years, but I think I would have remembered that topic.

I think we really do have the case of a loner. He did not receive his views regarding Jews in his congregation.