The World Council of Churches since its inception has consistently equated the main mission of the church with involvement in social issues. Many ministers and religious leaders from all denominations began denying the value of the churches’ traditional mission. They began to join new movements, many of them practicing civil disobedience and social radicalism, rather than preaching the gospel and striving to motivate their people spiritually.

The social gospel had many expressions and spokesmen. Among the more prominent was Washington Gladden (1836 – 1918), for thirty-six years a congregational pastor in Columbus, Ohio. A champion of what he called “applied Christianity”. The outstanding prophet of the social gospel was Walter Rauschenbusch, a graduate of the University of Rochester and of Rochester Theological Seminary, which were Baptist institutions. His “Christianity and the Social Crisis”, published in 1907, brought him nation-wide recognition. Walter Rauschenbusch and Dr. Harry Ward formed the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America on December 2, 1908. They were leaders of the social action movements in the churches that decided to do away with Christian individualism and turn to outright collectivism, using the church as their instrument. Socialism then, was their first concern. And, like all other false prophets who have infiltrated religion through the centuries, they used a “front” or disguise. This disguise, as we have seen, was “The Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom was not pictured as a spiritual society into which men and women had to be born as individuals through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior, but as a collectivist society which would be brought about by eradication of poverty, redistribution of wealth, correction of industrial inequities, and the bringing about of “economic justice.”

It was not only the clergy involved in this “social gospel”. Few present day churchgoers know that John Foster Dulles was a top-ranking officer in the Federal Council of Churches. He was Secretary of State under President Eisenhower. John Foster Dulles, Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White worked together in the State Department that planned the United Nations for the creation of a godless New World Order. It should also be recalled that Alger Hiss was responsible for convincing Roosevelt to present at Yalta the control of Eastern Europe to the Communist block, ignoring the Captive Nations, which included Armenia.

The Christians of America began to detect an evil anti-Christ influence in the Federal Council of Churches. Hearing of this, the Rothschild banking house of Europe in 1922, together with their brethren of the American banking monopoly (moneychangers of the temple), conceived and began financially supporting the teaching of secular humanism and the liberation theology in the major theological universities of America, in order to set the stage for cosmetically renaming the “Federal”…. to the “National” Council of Churches.

On November 29, 1950 the Federal Council of Churches was finally renamed the National Council of Churches (just a different wolf in sheep’s clothing). On September 30, 1952, amid great fanfare, a Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted by the National Council of Christ in the United States of America (successor to the Federal Council) was presented to the American public. It omitted key passages in order to cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus and to remove passages unfavorable to the Jews.

The Geneva-based W.C.C. claims a membership of 263 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches in 90 countries. A large number of men and women who belong to the member churches feel that their denominations have turned their attentions away from questions of faith and are no longer speaking to their spiritual needs and concerns. Even a limited study of the aims of the W.C.C. will reveal the truth of these assumptions. The goal of the globalists was to use the church as an institution to promote the social gospel – basically the redistribution of wealth. Instead of looking to God, their family and the Christian community, they were looking for salvation from the state.

One of the movements which the W.C.C. has supported wholeheartedly is the ecumenical movement, which actually means (the union of all Christian denominations into one great ecclesiastical body), not for good, but rather for diverting true Christian thought. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, who retired as the General Secretary of the W.C.C., delivered an address in the Riverside Church in New York City on November 21, 1972, in which he set forth his ideas of the ecumenical movement. The text of his address is quoted in some detail, for it gives a very good idea of the attitudes of the W.C.C. towards various phases of contemporary American life. Dr. Blake stated in no uncertain terms that “the chief ecumenical assumptions must be understood and accepted by American Christians if they wish their faith to be relevant to the real human problems of the last quarter of the 20th century!” Why this should be so, is not explained; it is simply assumed. “Human problems” was not the basis of Christ’s teachings and had nothing to do with His gospel. The tradition of the Christian Church is that Christ has come to give us the abundant life now and in the life to come.

The W.C.C. has long been committed to the social gospel, which means that it has accepted the socialist economic philosophy as the ideal way of life. The W.C.C. has often expressed deep concern over oppression and injustice especially, they say, as it exists in the capitalist countries. However, the W.C.C. has expressed little concern over the injustice and loss of individual liberty, which exists in Communist countries. Isn’t it ironic, the very capitalists that the W.C.C. denounce such as the Eli Lilley, Rockefeller and other foundations are financing more than 200 seminaries of America in teaching liberation theology. It seems that truth is not truth, but rather what present day moneychangers (such as those that Christ drove from the temple) want it to be. Truth should be simple. Truth is the foundation for all of life, whether for individuals, families, or nations.

The W.C.C. is concerned that ministers are failing to use the power of the pulpit to redress social grievances. But the W.C.C. had not used its good offices to champion the thousands of persecuted Christians in the Soviet Union, those people who merely wished to worship God in their own way and not follow the dictates of a state-controlled church. There should be only one mediator between God and man in a Christian culture, and that is Christ; not the Socialist State envisioned by the W.C.C., which created new terminology of words, such as “new structures for society”, “liberation”, “struggle for social justice”, and many others. It is God’s Holy Spirit, and definitely not the W.C.C., which Armenians should embrace and uphold. His truth, with our understanding and support, is what should help guide and strengthen the Armenian people spiritually into a bright 21st century.

There has continued for over two centuries, diabolical warfare against the Christian religion worldwide, the most recent being the decimation of Serbia, a Christian nation. Careful thought and questions should be given. Who were those that gave such passionate support of that war? Is America being used to promote an “evil world empire of domination?” Has it lost the good from its Christian heritage?

The W.C.C. has many documented files concerning the abuses of Christians by the Soviet government, but ignored them. Let us examine the obsession with socialist Marxism, which is dominant in the thinking of council leaders. Dr. Philip Potter, the council’s West Indian general secretary, in an official publication of the United Church of Christ and the United Presbyterian Church, contained a photograph of Dr. Potter with his hand raised in the clenched fist, which is the Communist salute. Dr. Potter, who said that he had visited Soviet Russia six or seven times, stated that each time he gained great inspiration during his visit!

With this background of the W.C.C., it is incomprehensible how the Armenian people, having always traditionally supported and defended our historically free and independent church, could stand by and allow this association to take place. Our church, throughout a great deal of its history, has been forced to represent the Armenian people as government (because of a lack of national sovereignty at times) but never with the anti-Gods. The Armenian Church is rich with its saints and martyrs who gave their lives for the true word of the Lord. The Armenian Church and its people should not abandon their sacrifices. Christ was not a compromiser of the truth, and so true disciples should not compromise Christ, yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Our people have always been the defender of the Armenian National Church, so long as it maintained its independent national identity by teaching spiritual values as taught by our Lord God, instead of involving itself with the economic philosophies of socialism and the liberation theology. It matters not, as to how fully educated and oratorically dynamic our church leaders are, but rather how faithfully they follow the true gospel of Christ.

In December 1945 John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donated a million dollars to the Friends of The World Council of Churches. Several months later, in February 1946, a meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland by this same provisional committee. Here it was announced that an international religious training center was to be set up in Geneva. Instructions would be given to students all over the world to prepare them for leadership in interchurch activities. The purpose of the commission: “To stimulate the churches of all nations to a more vigorous expression of the demand of the Christian conscience in relation to the political policies of governments.” These events affected the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon. It became this association that Armenian churches (both Orthodox and Protestant) were first introduced to the fraudulent and anti-Christ World Council of Churches. Those who serve God with Christ’s words cannot serve man’s creations of deviationist church entities. Doing so is serving two masters.

The Apostle Peter never went to a seminary, never was a theologian, but only a fisherman who listened to God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, and who, — would dare question his brilliance, in the word of God? If our Armenian theologians are trying to work with the likes of the W.C.C. in a spiritual detante, with the intent that they are going to change or find a common ground, be assured that it can be likened to placing a healthy apple into a bushel of rotten apples, hoping the rotten apples will turn healthy. You cannot make an alliance with evil without surrendering something in return.

Our church has been great because it has historically been free. It is said that we want to introduce our church to the world via the W.C.C. Let us illustrate this with an analogy. Imagine having guests for breakfast and wanting to impress them. We find that we have a few nice fresh eggs (the Armenian Church), as well as some older bad eggs (W.C.C.). We decide to hastily mix the two and prepare scramble eggs. Would that impress our guests?

Rousas J. Rushdoony (of Armenian descent), one of America’s well-respected Christian leaders, makes a very choice comment regarding this subject. “The concern of Christianity’s enemies is a New World Order, one without Christ. Man believes that he can, with his planning and controls, create a better, orderly arrangement than can the triune (trinity) of God. Of course, what he creates is not a cosmos, but rather a vast and evil disorder.”

The Armenian people should demand a return of their church to its historically free and independent status. It should concentrate its efforts on improving the religious and spiritual values of our people instead of supporting the enemies of Christianity. With that achieved, the world will then recognize the greatness of the Armenian Church and its people.

Let the Armenian Church stand only with the true way of the Lord.

Ardavast Avakian
36008 Ann Arbor Tr. September 8, 1999
Livonia, Michigan 48150
ardavast@att.net