March 22 Today in OPC History

On March 22, 1980, the Presbytery of Northern California meeting at Novato, California, communicated to the Forty-Seventh (1980) General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church that it voted to concur with the overture of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. In the overture, the Presbytery of Philadelphia had asked the General Assembly to issue a statement setting forth the true doctrine of the origin of man and condemning the teaching of macroevolution, even when set forth as theistic.

Meeting seven weeks later at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, the Forty-Seventh General Assembly answered the overture. The Assembly stated "that since the Westminster Confession, IV, clearly states that God created all things out of nothing and that Adam and Eve were created by direct acts of God at particular times, and thereby condemns the teaching that man developed from lower forms of life, no further statement is necessary in the context of this overture."

Picture: Forty-Seventh (1980) General Assembly