The Bulletin
of the
Church of Christ at
New Georgia
Tim Johnson, editor
August 31, 2003
In
This Issue:
The
Wonderful and Sad Story of God and Man
What
Every Denomination Needs
by
Steve Klein
THE WONDERFUL AND SAD STORY
OF GOD AND MAN
God, Who created all things and Who is the eternal One in Whom there is life, made man in His own image and gave him an honorable position of dominion over the beasts and the fowls. He gave man intelligence and reason, and endowed him with the capability of making choices based on reasoning and desire. God gave him a healthful and pleasant place to live and a woman to be his helper, companion, and wife. God loved them both with an active, benevolent love. They were upright and pure. What a wonderful beginning!
However, it wasn't long before the first two human beings, through human reason and Satan's deceit, chose a course of action that was disobedient to God and disgraceful to themselves. How greatly displeased God was! He punished them for their wrongdoing, and yet He loved them and made provisions for them. As they made their way through life and bore children, their burdens were greatly increased. Hard work and pain were a part of their lives, and they lived to see the time when one of their sons killed his own brother and became a fugitive and a vagabond. How sad! But this was just the beginning of sorrows. Within a few generations in which God blessed mankind with many children, the hearts of people had completely turned away from God, so that the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually. Finally God's longsuffering ran out, and the flood destroyed all of the race except for eight souls- Noah and his family, who were saved by God's grace because Noah did what was right.
With Noah and his family, the race was given a fresh start. God's wonderful goodness and mercy abounded in blessings upon His creatures. How sad that people did not repay the goodness of God with thanksgiving and reverence! How sad that they turned again to sin! Yet the longsuffering of God provided His rebellious and wayward creatures with the sustenance of life, and worked to implement His plan to give them opportunity to return to Him in obedience and to be forgiven of their wrongs.
God called Abraham out of Ur, and he became Abraham, the faithful servant of God, through whom God blessed all nations of the earth in providing through Abraham's seed a Redeemer. The longsuffering work of God in building a nation out of a rough and mean bunch of boys, sons of Jacob, is truly a wonderful story of the faithfulness of God in the face of the unfaithfulness of mankind. But God had promised faithful Abraham, and God keeps His promises to those who keep faith with Him. The history of Israel is a sad story of a thankless people through much of their existence as a nation.
Finally, having preserved a remnant through which the Seed should come, God sent His Son to become the perfect offering for the sins of the world - an offering making forgiveness available to all who obey Him. What a wonderful demonstration of supreme, divine love and grace! What a wonderful salvation for those who love and obey Him! What a sad story for the vast multitudes who turn away in ingratitude and refuse to hear Him! How fearful their plight in the judgment! Where do you stand?
We get a lot of traffic on our web site, NewGeorgiaChurch.com. One section of our site that consistently receives a number of visitors is Denominations & World Religions. In the past two months alone, this section has been accessed over 240 times. Here is the introduction to Denominations & World Religions as it appears on the site:
This section of our web site is designed for members of churches of Christ who wish to gain a basic understanding of the teachings and practices of other religions. If you are a member of one of these "other religions" please feel free to study these lessons as well. Seeing oneself through the eyes of others can be enlightening. It is not our intention to misrepresent any religion; if you feel we have done so, please let us know (you can e-mail us by clicking here).
Since first putting this material on the web, I have received a number of e-mails from folks about it -- some who felt that it really helped them, and two or three who felt that the material misrepresented their religion. I got a typical one of these this last week. It reads as follows:
I do feel that you have misrepresented the Church of the Nazarene. Instead of using the scripture that our doctrine is based upon, you chose other scripture out of context to support your "point of conflict" and weak points."
Naturally, I wrote back and asked that the letter writer tell me the specific instances where I had misrepresented the Church of the Nazarene, and I also asked that she send me the Scriptures that their doctrine is based upon. I indicated that if these were provided, I would consider altering the material on the web site.
But I want to draw your attention to a couple of things in this e-mail. First, notice that she wrote that, "Every church, regardless of denomination, needs a form of structure." If she means by this that every denomination needs something to go by other than the Bible, I AGREE! Every DENOMINATION does need a form of structure -- something other than the Bible to tell it what it is to believe, teach and practice and how it is to be organized. The reason it needs this is because NO MODERN DENOMINATION is found in the BIBLE! You cannot take the Bible and it alone and get Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Nazarenes or any other denomination. You need some other form of structure. You need a creed, a convention, a human founder or human doctrine.
Then the e-mail asks, "Does the Church of Christ not have one?" Well, yes. It's the Bible. The church of Christ needs no human form of structure. It is the church you can read about in the Bible. If we take the Word of the Lord as our seed, and plant it alone, the only thing that will grow will be the Lord's church -- The Church of Christ. The seed of God's Word is all that is needed. Denominations need something else. And Jesus said, "Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted" (Matthew 15:13).
by Steve Klein