It was the determined agreement of the former Bereans who took part in the Jersey City Conference to insist upon an acceptance of the Ten Point Statement on the Nature and Sacrifice of Christ as a minimum safeguard against the erroneous theories long current in the Central group. Under pressure, this determination was not maintained.
We firmly believe that any who do not WILLINGLY AND READILY express their approval of the Ten Point Statement designed to defend Truth and guard against error, are not of one mind with us, and consequently a union in fellowship with such would not be mutually beneficial. The Ten point Statement (formulated by the Los Angeles ecclesia, and accepted by Central in 1940 as a sound basis for reunion on the question) is as follows:
FOUR ERRORS TO BE REJECTED
1. That the nature of Christ was not exactly like ours.
2. That the offering of Christ was not for himself, and that Christ never made any offering for himself.
3. That Christ's offering was for personal sins or moral impurity only. That our sins laid on Christ made him unclean and accursed of God, and that it was from this curse and this uncleanness that Christ needed cleansing.
4. That Christ died as a substitute; that is, that he was punished for the transgression of others, and that he became a bearer of sin by suffering the punishment due for sins.
SIX TRUTHS TO BE ACCEPTED
1. That death came into the world extraneously to the nature bestowed upon Adam in Eden, and was not inherent in him before sentence.
2. That the sentence defile him (Adam) and became a physical law of his being, and was transmitted to all his posterity.
3. That the word 'sin" is used in two principal acceptations in the Scriptures. it signifies in the first place "the transgression of law," and in the next it represents that physical principle of the animal nature which is the cause of all its diseases, death, and resolution to dust.
4. That Jesus possessed our nature, which was a defiled, condemned nature.
5. That it was therefore necessary that Jesus should offer for himself for the purging of his own nature, first from the uncleanness of death, that, having by his own blood obtained eternal redemption for himself, he might be able afterward to save to the uttermost those that come to God by him.
6. That the doctrine of substitution (that is, that a righteous man can, by suffering the penalty due to the sinner, free the sinner from the penalty of his sins) is foreign to Scripture and is a dogma of heathen mythology.
We earnestly desire a fellowship on the basis of a wholehearted oneness of mind, but we believe recent events have shown the fallacy of attempting to build fellowship on any basis involving compromise or insufficient investigation. We believe the principle of uniting first and "straightening things out" later is neither scripturally sound nor practically workable.
There must be a willingness to face the facts of the past that have brought about the problems of the present. Essential truths have been assailed. Friends of the Truth will GLADLY make clear their position: yea, we be ANXIOUS to make it clear.
