(Editor's Note: Upon receiving Brother Hardin's reply to my charges against him, I sent a copy of it to Brother Connie Adams with the request that he write a reply to the charges made against him by Brother Hardin. It appeared to me that Brother Hardin was using the opportunity to respond to me which I granted him as an opportunity of publicly presenting his side of the conflict with the editor of Searching The Scriptures. Frankly, I neither appreciated it nor had any intention of publishing it without answering it. Since the matter did not personally involve me and I did not want to give any more "warped" understandings of the situation, I requested that Brother Adams respond to Brother Hardin's charges. Here is his brief statement.)

In his response to Mike Willis, Arnold Hardin has left the impression that he was treated unfairly in our exchange in Searching The Scriptures. We carried two articles from J. T. Smith and two from Arnold Hardin on the subjects over which they differed. In further correspondence Brother Hardin insisted that he had been misrepresented. Because of that, I wrote an article in which I raised a series of questions, the answers to which would have resolved the question of misrepresentation. Brother Hardin responded in a six page manuscript. We marked some statements which involved the impugning of motives, sent the manuscript back to him and asked him to either delete these three of four sentences or else re-state them in such a way as not to get, personal or impugn motives. He responded with a very bitter letter, refused to change anything about it, charged again that I never meant to treat him fairly and said he would circulate his response on his own.

We asked Brother Hardin to comply with the same rules which we insist that all writers for Searching The Scriptures observe. We have returned manuscripts to writers who submit materials under assigned headings with the request that such references be omitted. Deleting the sentences in question had no material bearing on the subject at hand. The offer I made to him then still stands: if he will either delete or re-word the objectionable sentences, we will gladly carry his article and respond to it. This offer was published in Searching The Scriptures as a matter of record. We would like very much for our readers to see what he said in reply to the questions we raised since we are convinced his replies serve to verify what we have said about his convictions. There the matter stands, and will continue to stand, until Brother Hardin decides to comply with the same terms which all other writers in Searching The Scriptures are asked` to observe. We believe this is fair and serves the best interest of all concerned, and especially our readers.

Truth Magazine XXII: 2, p. 40
January 12, 1978