On August 19, 1948, the International Council of Christian Churches, an organization of fundamentalist Protestant churches formed a week earlier to counter the forthcoming World Council of Churches, ended its founding assembly at English Reformed Church in Amsterdam after electing as its president Rev. Carl McIntire, pastor of Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, New Jersey since 1933. The founding assembly was attended by 150 delegates from 39 denominations and 29 nations.
Relatively few Christians in the West are aware of the ICCC, but for many years it has had considerably more member denominations than the WCC. An example of an individual associated with the ICCC is Bishop Isaac Mokoena, chairman of the Reformed Independent Churches Association in South Africa in the 1980s and '90s. At a time when Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu was recognized by the world as the leader of black South Africans, Bishop Mokoena was leading an organization representing 4.5 million black South African church members. It will probably surprise most readers to find that that figure was 10 times the number represented by Archbishop Tutu. While Bishop Mokoena was relatively unknown outside his own country, he wasn't unknown to U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who had him as a guest at the White House.
The ICCC has a great history (see their website) of standing for the true Christian faith and opposing apostasy, with Dr. McIntire serving as its president until his death in 2002 at the age of 95. This blogger has lost track of the ICCC in recent years; it still seems to exist, but their website hasn't been updated since 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment