Truth Magazine

By Johnie Edwards

The Bible teaches it is Scriptural for a church to own and furnish a preacher a house in which to live as part of his support (2 Cor. 11:8). There are some real problems connected with this arrangement.

(1) “We furnish a house. ” When elders discuss financial arrangements with a preacher, they will tell the preacher how much they intend to pay him in money and then they say, “We also will furnish you a house.” This can be done. But, who furnishes who, what?

(2) The pay. The Bible teaches “that the laborer is worthy of his hire. . .” (Lk. 10:7). When elders decide on the figure to pay a preacher, they deduct the value of the house from what he would normally be paid if he provided his own house.

(3) Who furnishes who, what? Most have the furnishing business turned around. Instead of the church furnishing the preacher a house, the preacher is really furnishing the church a house! I know a church which owns the preacher’s dwelling and has an extra bedroom so the regular preacher can keep a visiting preacher. This is not so bad but the preacher had to buy extra bedroom furnishings for the visiting preacher’s bedroom. I doubt if this is the responsibility of the preacher!

(4) Salary is less. It has been estimated that a preacher who lives in a house owned by the church is usually paid 30% to 40% less than if he provides for his own house.

(5) Buys two houses. If a preacher lives in church owned housing all of his normal preaching life, he will pay for at lest two houses for churches in his lifetime. Who furnishes who, what?

(6) Profit. Oftentimes a church will sell a house, paid for by preachers who live in the house, for a profit. With inflation and the rising cost of living, this can amount to about 12% per year. Have you ever heard of a church who gave this profit to the preacher who really made them the profit?

(7) A suggestion. I have lived in both my own house and church-owned property, and I believe a good way to help provide for preachers (especially when they get older) is to pay them enough so they can buy their own house. They will need it when they get older.

Truth Magazine XXIII: 29, p. 476
July 26, 1979

By Jeffery Kingry

In our country’s last war, now forgotten and denied like a bad dream, I had the occasion to endure a year amidst the suffering and carnage. “Home” was taken from-me by the impersonal and cruel hand of bureaucracy. During that time, I was able often to recover from the sight of the ruins and the heaviness of heart that came by nightfall by sending my imagination off on a journey. I would recall the peaceful town of Columbus, Mississippi with the brethren standing outside the church building talking about hunting or the harvest. Smiles and handshakes and a quiet, “Good evening, brother Jeff” would greet me as I approached. In the eye of my mind it would be so.

But, after about six months I had a curious experience. On R & R in Hawaii, I met almost the very experience I had so long imagined. But the longed-for peace would not come to my heart. I felt ostracized and the idyllic scene was tormenting rather than tranquilizing.

Within five days, I was back amidst the horror and the people whose faces bore the ruines of our shared anguish. Strangely, I felt more at home. These understood what I was going through, because they were suffering it themselves. There was a kinship that could not be shared with those who did not know. The brethren “back home” did not understand. To them I was a somewhat disquieting apparition from another, far removed world. There is nothing more comforting than to have people who understand us. Just a glance, a knowing nod means so much from one who has shared the same pain. When ? person is hard pressed by dread and terror, then home and fulfillment and the people who are fortunate and have everything these suddenly become alien.

The Isolation of Living

It is in our isolation and hopelessness that God really touches the lives of his saints through His Son Jesus. In our presentation of the Gospel to the world and to those who have need in the church, we sometimes make the wrong approach. What is the good of all the usual religious froth we see in the materialistic cultism so many preach? What do these pious sentimentalities actually accomplish:

To some, Christianity is merely a pattern of teaching, or the organization and function of the church, some great Bible doctrines, or the social amenities and prestige to be found in being well thought of by the brethren. All these things are necessary, but actually constitute only a part. It is form that is adjunct to the substance of the gospel. Beside the form, the personality and character as a personal standard for the Christian stands but as a shadow, a far-removed pious figure that does not really touch our life.

What is love that no longer emanates from immediate contact with Him who “is” love, but lives in us only as a kind of memory, a mere distinct echo? In some men’s speech they reduce this shadow to a grotesque caricature: “Have joy in your heart! Wake to face each new day with sunshine in your soul!” It is pathetic to see the yearning that these expressions betray, but at the same time it is quite foolish to put them in the form of an imperative. How can I possibly go about getting sun into my heart? Obviously there can be sunshine in my soul only if the sun shines upon me, and then the brightness of my heart is a reflection of it. But how can I “produce” the sun?

Such imperatives reflect the sad longing of people who have lost the real thing and sorely feel the deep need that must be filled. Knowing that something is gone they try to effect a “synthetic” sun which can fill the void; “I love Jesus” bumper stickers, One Way signs, religious trinkets, symbolism, distinctive clothing, peculiar systems, fame, popularity, publishing endless books, and many other things represent this effort to create something from within that will fill the void they feel. Leaders of the materialistic religion offer nothing to those in need, and produce only disillusionment in those who listen to them.

The Wounded

What good then is all the religious talk which is directed everywhere but to the need of man? What difference does it make to speak to me of the identity of the church as a doctrinal matter, the history of the Bible, or various doctrines which do not touch my life or living in any way. What use are these things to me if I am repining in loneliness, my conscience is tormenting me, if anxiety is strangling me? What good is a omniscient, omnipotent, eternal King to me, a poor wretch, a heap of misery, for whom nobody cares, for whom life has become an existence of pain, someone stared at in public but never seen?

The “loving Father above the starry skies” is up there in some monumental headquarters while I sit somewhere on this trash heap, living in a walk-up or a mansion, working at a stupid job that gives me the miseries or at an executive’s desk which is armored with two anterooms. Most go their way, read their papers or turn on the T.V. and vegetate, for what does a “message” mean that is not good news to me in any way?

But, if someone says “There is someone who knows you, someone who grieves for you when you go your own way, and it cost Him cruelly to be the star to whom you can look, the spring from which you can drink and never thirst, the staff upon which you can lean and never fall,” then that is something I can listen to and be touched by.

Jesus is not the pastel colored picture man’s sentimentality has turned him into. Neither is he the intellectual exercise to be found in college courses on Biblical literature and hermeneutics. It was not the warm, cute creche of Christmas card scenes that Jesus was born into. Mary brought forth her manchild in pain with the smell of the barnyard sharp in the air. The child was shoved off into a stable by man’s indifference. His parents were forced to flee, and went out upon the road as refugees to a strange land to escape the bloody hands of a despotic politician who murdered little babies to get to Him. Then came the lifelong hostility of men; the child always remained, even after he grew up, a fugitive. His heart trembled under the impact of all the temptations and fears that shake us too. And finally, his life ended as it began. He was shoved out of the world by greedy, selfish, mean men. He died on a cross in shame and humiliation. His friends deserted Him and denied having ever known Him. It was not a “grand old cross” – it was a cruel gallows, the symbol of our sin and its cost. The Man who loved without measure, suffered without measure as He saw men rushing headlong into senseless destruction – they had no use for Him.

Mine Iniquities Are Over My Head

Man needs God’s words of comfort and hope. It is not in man to deal with the hurt and failure of life by himself (Psa. 38:2-22). But, the Gospel calls us to a different kind of life, for when Christ suffered for us, he left us a pattern, and we must follow in His footsteps. He did no wrong, nor was there ever any treachery upon His lips. Yet, when He was insulted He offered no insult in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, rather He left His cause in the hands of the righteous Judge. He carried the burden of our sins with Him to the cross, that we might be able to cease to live for sin, and instead live for righteousness. It was by His wounds that our wounds are healed.

God’s message is alive and full of power. It cuts through the hardest armor unlike any honed steel in this universe, striking through to the dividing line of even soul and spirit, to the innermost intimacies of a man’s being. The Word handled rightly is capable of exposing the very thoughts and motives of a man’s heart. No being created can escape God’s view, but lies bare and helpless before the eyes of Him to whom we must explain all that we have done.

We do not have one that takes our side who is incapable of being touched by how we feel, because He has shared the flesh and the experience with us. Every pain that is common to man, He has endured, yet never with sin.

We can therefore be bold, coming with courage to God’s throne that we might receive mercy for our failures. All this because He died for us. One who would give His very life for me will not deny me anything I need which was of lesser worth. We can find His strength to help us when we need it. He knows and understands, and is no stranger to our suffering. He loves me and He gave Himself for me. That is “good news” – The Gospel indeed!

Truth Magazine XXIII: 29, pp. 474-475
July 26, 1979

By Johnny Stringer

In describing the extreme wickedness of the world of his day, Paul said that they were “without natural affection” (Rom. 1:31). According to William Barclay, the term which Paul used had reference to family love. The thinking of people had become so perverted that the natural affection which should have existed within families was absent. Here is Barclays description of the horrible situation which existed at that time:

It was quite true that this was an age in which family love was dying. Never was the life of the child so precarious as at this time. Children were considered a misfortune. When a child was born, the child was taken and laid at the father’s feet. If the father lifted up the child that meant that he acknowledged it. If he turned away and left it the child was literally thrown out. There was never a night when there were not thirty or forty abandoned children left in the Roman forum. Every night in life children were literally thrown away. Even Seneca, great soul as he was, could write: “We kill a mad dog; we slaughter a fierce ox; we plunge the knife into sickly cattle lest they taint the herd; children who are born weakly and deformed we drown.” The natural bonds of human affection had been destroyed (The Letter to the Romans, pp. 32-33).

Of course, in our civilized society we are shocked by such practices. We are repulsed by the very thought of throwing away or drowning little children. Being a refined and enlightened people, we have the good taste to kill ours before they are born – while they are still out of sight! We are not heathen! Really, though, is not the practice of abortion indicative of an absence of natural affection? When one knows that within her body she is carrying a tiny human being, her own son or daughter, how can she possibly conspire to have that child killed and the little body thrown away?

In Spite of Knowledge

There is indeed a comparison between those of Paul’s day who were without natural affection, and those of our day who kill their offspring through abortion. This comparison can be further seen by Paul’s affirmation that the people who practiced the abominations enumerated in Romans 1 really knew better. In verse 32 he said that they knew those who committed such things were worthy of punishment. It is true that the Gentile world did not have a written revelation such as the Jews did, but it is a fact that all men have some concept of right and wrong, even apart from a written revelation. For example, even in societies which have had no access to a written revelation, when people see a big, strong, muscular man beating up on a frail, elderly lady who has done him no harm, they will say that his action is wrong. One does not have to have a written revelation to know that. I believe that God has naturally endowed man with the capacity to recognize some things to be immoral. See also Rom. 2:14-15.

The problem was that those described in Romans 1 suppressed this knowledge. They refused to face up to it and permit it to influence their lives. Therefore, their consciences became insensitive and their thinking grew more and more perverted. This is possibly what Paul meant in verse 18 when he described men as holding the truth in unrighteousness. The word “hold” can carry different ideas. This is true of both the Greek word and its English translation. It can mean to hold in the sense of possessing or clinging to. Taken in this sense, to hold the truth would be to possess it, or to lovingly cling to it and adhere to it. However, the word can mean to hold down, suppress, hinder, restrain. I am inclined to believe that this is Paul’s meaning here. The New American Standard Bible says, “suppress the truth.” I believe Paul’s meaning to be that they suppressed the truth which, deep down within them, they knew, not permitting it to have its good effect. Harrison gives a quotation from Lenski which could very well convey the correct interpretation: “Whenever the truth starts to exert itself and makes them feel uneasy in their moral nature, they hold-if down, suppress it. Some drown its voice by rushing into their immoralities; others strangle the disturbing voice by argument and by denial” (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. X, p. 23).

What about those who practice abortion today? Deep down within their souls, do they have the consciousness that it really is not right? Do they-simply suppress that inner voice, shutting it out and refusing to listen to it? I believe they do. This is indicated by the difficulty many of them have in making up their minds to have the abortion. It is further indicated by the fact that later in life, perhaps years after the abortion, many of them have very severe psychological and emotional problems as a result of guilt feelings which come to the surface. They were able to stifle the voice of their consciences at the time of their abortions, but their consciences were not completely dead, and later produce very deep feelings of guilt.

It is always good to have guilt feelings after we sin. Without guilt feelings we would have no desire for God’s forgiveness. If you have such guilt feelings, whether it be due to an abortion or for some other reason, do not despair. You have hope in the gospel. Through compliance with the terms of pardon set forth in that glorious message, you can be forgiven; and knowing that your Creator no longer holds you guilty should bring you great comfort. If you have had ,an abortion, remember that if God forgave thousands of people who helped crucify His own Son (Acts 2:23, 36-41), He will surely forgive you for what you did to your child – if you meet His conditions as they did (Acts 2:38).

Truth Magazine XXIII: 29, p. 473
July 26, 1979

By Bruce James

The inspired writers showed the work of Jesus, as well as His character, by employing metaphors. They used different objects of nature to show forth His beauty and glory, such as the earth, the sea and the sky. His stability and strength is seen in the rock, His fruitfulness in the vine, His purity in the filly, the satisfaction He offers in the fountain of living water, and the true light as the light of the world.

The Old Testament prophet Malachi refers to Him as “the Sun of righteousness.” There are many ways in which we can figuratively see Jesus as the Sun. There are many ways in which we can figuratively see Jesus as the Sun. There are a lot of stars, seas, trees and flowers but there is only one sun. On the earth it has no peers. Celestially speaking, there are many angels, seraphim and cherubim, but there is only one Son of God, one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ.

When we remember that the sun is the center of the solar system, we are also reminded that Christ is the Most High. When we think of the widespread influence the sun has in the world and how in shines on valleys, mountains, deserts, vineyards, the rich and the poor, we are compelled to meditate on God’s great Gift to the world – the Saviour of all men or all who would obey His voice. North, South, East or West, Jesus has no earthly distinctions, and all men, whether rich or poor can enjoy His brightness.

Jesus is the fountain of light. As the “Sun of righteousness,” He removes all darkness to whosoever will accept the light of knowledge, happiness; holiness, and heaven. Jesus, the Sun, is the source of beauty and vegetation. Flowers and plants would be nothing without the sun and we are a pool of gloom without the Son. All the fruits of righteousness are produced by Him. Jesus said, “Without me, ye can do nothing.”

We can also see Jesus as the Sun in regard to the types and shadows of the Old Testament. When we read of such things in the Old Testament as the tabernacle, the Holy Place and the Most Holy place we are made to wonder as to their meaning. But Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, has removed the shadows of things to come by His first coming to the earth. We can know what these types and figures look forward to now because Jesus has shed light upon them.

Regarding the subjects of conversion and salvation, Jesus, the Sun, brought life and immortality into light. But it must be remembered what Malachi said: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings” (Mal. 4:2). This is the kind of fear that is holy in that it produces a regard for Jesus’ authority and laws. It is associated with love and obedience. Without this fear, we will reject Christ and despise His way of life for us. Has Jesus, the Sun arisen upon you? There is no saving light but that which He gives.

Truth Magazine XXIII: 29, p. 472
July 26, 1979