Truth Magazine

By Hal Snyder

The Great Commission requires that Christ’s disciples teach others (Matt. 28:19-20; Mk. 16:15-16; also read Jn. 6:45). Christianity is certainly a “taught” religion. People will not be converted without teaching, for none will be saved against their will or by accident (Acts 2:40; Heb. 5:9). And, no one can remain faithful as a child of God without continuing to learn (2 Pet. 3:18). So long as we may live, we must keep on studying, learning, living, and teaching the word of God (Gal. 6:9).

The church’s primary mission is to save the lost (Lk. 19:10). This is accomplished by evangelizing (Acts 20:20), edifying (Eph. 4:11-16), and ministering to the saints (2 Cor. 9:1).

Our teaching involves saint and sinner alike – people learn from what we both say and do (Matt. 5:16).

Consider how the church teaches people:

1. From the pulpit. Still this is the most powerful means of emphasizing the word of God. It has the advantage of teaching many at one time (many can be persuaded by the same words) and people are in attendance because they choose to be there. But there are some disadvantages, too. The preacher relies on his judgment (or that of the elders) in the selection of material to be presented. Unfortunately such may not be what everyone needs and there is no opportunity to deal with questions or problems of audience. Yet pulpit preaching remains an effective means of reaping the fruits of the labors of the entire congregation.

2. Personal evangelism. This allows everyone in the congregation to get involved (not so much a collective work of the church, rather work by individual Christians – see Acts 5:42). This is the most effective method of teaching because it allows the teacher to deal with questions when they arise and many personal problems or misunderstandings can be dealt with immediately. No doubt this is the most effective way of reaching people with the gospel of Christ.

3. Bible classes. This is one of the most effective means of teaching. Most agree that 90 percent of our conversions come as a result of such public teaching. Its advantages are that many people can be taught the same thing at one time; it is a more direct method of teaching than from the pulpit; and the teacher can deal with questions as they arise. But the most serious disadvantage of this method lies in the fact that we can only teach those who are present (Acts 10:33). And often something else is needed to get people there in the first place.

4. Printed page. There is tremendous power in the printed page, be it a newspaper, periodical, or tract. One can study thoroughly the subject at hand; study can be accomplished at the reader’s convenience (when they are in the proper frame of mind); and it is comparatively inexpensive. To be effective, the printed message must be a high-quality product, well-written, and attractive to the eye. But, only where the interest has been aroused will the message be effective. Also the printed material should be given to the right person, in the right way, at the right time. Remember that tracts are effective, particularly in visitation work.

5. Electronic media. The mass media (especially radio and television) can be a means of reaching many people at the same time with a common message. In overall cost and potential audience it is relatively inexpensive at the per listener/viewer rate. On the other hand, it is all too easy to just turn off the radio or TV, or to even change stations/channels. These methods are not as effective because the message is not as direct. The mass media are best utilized to make contacts, which makes any follow-up work (personal visits) imperative. Remember that the one-on-one teaching is the most-effective. Any preaching by this method should involve the interests of the entire congregation. Members of the congregation know the interests and needs of their friends, neighbors, and relatives. This way members, of the congregation can talk to them about the broadcast (subject, questions about the topic, or what was or wasn’t said) in an attempt to involve the contact in the personal evangelism process, invite them to Bible study and/or worship services or, perhaps, give them a tract.

Whatever method we employ, our efforts are concentrated on taking the message to them – that’s the “go” part of Matthew 28:19.

Guardian of Truth XXXIII: 10, p. 308
May 18, 1989

By Roy H. Lanier, Jr.

In the silence of many pulpits, and in the absence of distinctions formerly made about accuracy of doctrine, hasn’t the time come to step back and take a serious look at just where the church is today in modern America? Have some methods and means gradually crept in, some of which may displease the Lord?

Things that have been heretofore accepted, assumed and granted now are being ignored. A gradual loosening of boundaries that former generations were loathe to violate has taken place. Is it just that today, in the modern genius, men have discovered many expedients that are more helpful in getting the Lord’s work done? One might do well to remember a small but important point: To be expedient, something first must be lawful (1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23). Or could it be that today’s generation of churches has carelessly crossed some vital boundaries?

The church is in the eternal purpose of God (Eph. 3: 10,11). The redemption through Jesus Christ, as well as the design of His church, are from eternity.

The design of the church is to accomplish the mission of the Savior. He was to “save the people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21), stated as to “seek and save that which is lost” (Matt. 18:11), and to “give his life a ransom” (Matt. 20:28). Because the church is His body (Eph. 1:22,23), to be the “fulness of him that filleth all in all,” the church fulfills the mission of the Lord.

The church is designed to include all necessary functions in doing the mission of Christ. It is His fulness, the “habitation of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22), God’s “husbandry” (1 Cor. 3:9), and the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Surely none will want to argue that God did not design the church properly or fully to accomplish its purpose.

The church, as designed by God, is vital and absolute. It was purchased by the blood of Jesus (Acts 20:28), a distinction accorded no other organization, and He gave Himself for it (Eph. 5:23,25-30). He is coming to claim it and present it back into heaven. No other group, body or organization has such a promise.

Only one such unit exists (Eph. 4:4; 1 Cor. 12:13,20). God’s design and purpose included only one body, one group, one organization to be thus involved in the mission of redemption.

Spread within and without the local church today, a mass of other organizations interwoven within the framework of the church is manifest. It forms an umbrella round about the church, hovering over it. It is the “Para-church,” foreign to the Bible, but well-known to all in the 20th century.

Mission organizations, benevolent groups, medical units and edification-growth businesses are springing up outside the framework of local churches. Their intents and actions are good, even spiritual. Some of them are on an individual basis for all funding, but many are expecting local churches to finance them.

These extra organisms may include all sorts of evangelistic efforts not a part of, nor under the oversight of, any local congregation. It is not unknown for mission teams to be sent into foreign nations with the intent of establishing a local office structure outside the framework of any local congregation that might be established. Finances and planning are handled by this office, not by any Stateside church or church begun on the mission field. Radio stations are built, owned and operated by independent boards, but their finances are funded by local churches. Hospitals, medical clinics, foundations for medical operations, and so on, are now an accepted part of today’s working churches. Some of these are independent businesses, perhaps operated on a non-profit basis, but almost totally dependent upon local congregations for funding. Secular schools, called “Christian schools” and “Christian colleges” are quietly getting back into local church budgets.

Relief funds, set up as independent from any oversight of local churches, have sprung up soliciting local churches for their funding. They participate in many good works, but is this the way the Lord designed His church? Growth and edification corporations are now available to local churches, but churches are being asked to contribute regularly to their expense funds. Private care-home businesses are being organized, with every intent of being funded by churches across the United States.

Some necessary distinctions must be made. First, it is right and proper for individuals to do missions and benevolence outside the framework of any local church. In fact, one is not fulfilling one’s responsibility to Christ without doing such. One who is taught the truth is told to “communicate” (share in this world’s goods) with the one teaching him (Gal. 6:6). One also is charged to care for needy family members personally, that the church “be not charged” (1 Tim. 5:16). Thus, many challenges are open to individuals to accomplish great spiritual ends in the name of Christ on an individual basis.

Second, a distinction must be recognized between the individual’s doing something and the local church’s doing the same actions. A local church may feed a needy family, or a godly couple within the local church might buy the needed groceries, never calling upon the church for any reimbursement. Either way, the Lord can be glorified and the needy loved.

Third, the church can only march at the direction of its Head, Jesus Christ (Col. 1:18,19). It must avoid stepping out into the area of human genius and invention to do things that the Lord Jesus has not directed it to do. This was one of the major problems of the Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day; they added their traditions to the instructions of the law of Moses, thus violating sacred trust (Mk. 7:8,9).

Fourth, the church is charged exclusively with its work: teaching and helping (Eph. 4:11,12). Many would say “evangelism, edification and benevolence,” and this is as good a way to say it as any. The church is charged to teach the lost, continue to teach ones baptized (Matt. 28:18-20), and care for the needy (Acts 6; 11:29,30; 1 Cor. 16:1-4). So far as is known, no other work or activity should be charged to the church.

Finally, a church may pay for services received without funding the business itself. The church may purchase lesson books from a publisher, receiving goods and paying for them. Yet, the church cannot fund the man’s private business by making contributions to the firm itself. That is his private business and not within the instructions of the Lord for His church. A church may hire a plumber for needed work, but it has no right to include in its budget the support of the man’s business. The church has no right to fund some man’s business – spiritual or benevolent in nature though it may be.

Let the church be the church. Do not cloud it with all kinds of extra organizations or clutter it with things foreign to the Lord’s instructions. It has the greatest challenge of all centuries; let it be “about the Father’s business.”

Let individuals continue to climb great peaks of performance of spiritual works. Let men continue to invent ways to help redemption’s cause, let organizations flourish that may help in spiritual ways, and let the individuals pay for such great accomplishments.

Let there be accurate distinctions kept between the instructions of Jesus and the changing methods of men. We do not need organizations formed by men, planned to be funded by churches, that deny the absoluteness of God’s eternal planning for His church. God did not make any mistakes in planning, nor did He leave anything out that should be added by men.

God needs men to take seriously His design and go to work. The plans, designs and provisions are there. Why desire to change, add, devise, reorient or restructure the Lord’s church? God needs the help of men today, but in the way of participation, not addition, to His design.

A “para-church” is not the answer; the Lord’s church is the answer devised from eternity. Why question or change God’s provisions?

Guardian of Truth XXXIII: 11, pp. 323-324
June 1, 1989

By Edgar McFadden

I often think about heaven and spending eternity with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the angels, and all those who will have been judged righteous on the last day. In doing so, the words of the hymn written by James Rowe, “I Walk With The King” readily come to mind:

“I walk with the King, hallelujah! I walk with the King, praise His name!”

A familiar passage of Scripture conveying this beautiful thought is found in Colossions 2:6-7. It reads, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.” “Walk” in the New Testament usually means the way a person lives. This concept is clearly shown in Romans 6:4, Ephesians 2:10, and 1 John 2:6. Christians are to live and walk by the Spirit in like manner as Christ walked while on this earth.

Another way one can walk with God is to keep all of his commandments. “Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess” (Deut. 5:33).

Enoch, the father of Methuselah, was one of two men in the Old Testament who did not taste death (Elijah was the other one) because he “walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Gen. 5:24). The ungodly and profane are without God in this world because they have chosen to walk contrary to his teaching. The godly, on the other hand, walk with God, which presupposes reconciliation to God, for two cannot walk together, except they be agreed (Amos 3:3). The Holy Spirit, instead of saying, Enoch lived, says, Enoch “walked with God” for it is the life of a righteous man to walk with God. It was the joy and support of his life coupled with communion with God that was better to him than life itself (Phil. 1:21).

Enoch was removed to a better world in that he did not live like the rest nor did he die like the rest “for God took him.” We are told in Hebrews 11:5 that he was translated to heaven. It was the faith and steadfastness of Enoch that pleased God and consequently was removed from mortality without death to immortality. This is the change that shall pass over the living and the dead at the second coming of, Christ (1 Cor. 15:51-54).

Most people today never take the time to seriously think about heaven. Our lives are measured by time. There is a time for us to get out of bed, a time to eat, a time to go to work, and a time to go back to, bed. There is even a time when we shall die. The Hebrew writer said, “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). The account of the last judgment is given by Jesus- in Matthew 25:3146. All nations will be judged and separated with the sheep on his right hand and the goats on the left (v. 33). The sheep represent the righteous and they are the ones who will inherit the kingdom.

It is a sobering thought, indeed, that each passing day brings us that much closer to our eternal destiny, whether it be eternal life or eternal death. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people because we have already experienced a part of the joy of heaven while living by faith on earth. James reminds us, “draw nigh unto God, and he will draw nigh unto you” (Jas. 4:8). Therefore let us continue to march with unrelenting determination toward the city “whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10). Then we’ll be able to join the hymn writer in saying,

No longer I roam, my soul faces home,

I walk and I talk with the King.

Oh! What a glorious day that will be for you and me.

Guardian of Truth XXXIII: 10, p. 307
May 18, 1989

By Michael Garrison

The word “must” is used several times in the Scriptures. Some do not know the meaning of the word or else they ignore the meaning in an attempt to hold to a position they think to be scriptural.

First, we should define the word. Strong’s dictionary defines it as: “it is (was, etc.) necessary (as binding): behooved, be meet, must (needs), (be) need(ful), ought should.” Thayer’s definition is: “it is necessary, there is need of, it behooves, is right and proper; . . . it denotes any sort of necessity.”

In John 3:7, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” This new birth consists of being “born of water and of the Spirit,” i.e. in order for one to be born again, “it is . . . necessary (as binding)” for one to be born of both water and the Spirit. One may think he was “born anew” before either or both elements involved in the new birth were complied with, but Jesus, by using the word “must,” shows the necessity of water and the Spirit in being born again.

Another example of “must” occurs in Acts 1:16. Here, the apostle Peter said, “This scripture (Psa. 41:9) must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas.” In other words, “it was necessary (as binding)” that Judas do what he did in betraying Jesus.

Now, having established the use of the term “must,” let us look at two modern examples where some reject the meaning and application of the term.

In Charles Holt’s magazine, The Examiner (Vol. 2, no. 2, March 1987), Holt wrote, “1 Tim. 3 and Titus 1 are abused and misused when the things mentioned there are asserted to be ‘qualifications’ necessary for one to be officially appointed to be an ‘elder’. . . We read all of this into these passages.” Is he teaching truth when he says this? No!

Not what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write: “A bishop then must be. . . ” and a list of about 16 items follows. From the definition of “must,” we learned it “denotes any sort of necessity.” So, 1 Timothy 3 is not misused when selecting men to be appointed elders. It would be a misuse of the Scriptures to teach, as Holt and others do, that “The word ‘elder’ simply means ‘older’ or ‘senior'” (The Examiner, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1986).

I wrote to Holt and informed him of his error in March of 1987 and have yet to hear from him. I told him I noted the word “must” is used in Acts 9:6. There Saul of Tarsus was told by Jesus Christ to “arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do” (emphasis mine, m1g). Now some may will say that we abuse and misuse the passage and say baptism (required in Acts 22:16) really is not one of the items one “must” submit to, but that doesn’t change the Truth that Jesus found it necessary to bind baptism to wash away sins. So it is when some teach as Holt does; the Truth must be taught and contended for and those teaching error must be exposed.

After Bob West had an article in The Examiner (Vol. 3, No. 5, Sept. ’88) titled, “I’ve Learned Better,” I wrote to him to let him know how disappointed I was in his departure from the faith. (He basically agrees with Holt on the subject of elders.) We have engaged in a good deal of correspondence. In one of his letters, West wrote, “. . . Isn’t it possible that Paul was giving Timothy a general description of a shepherd (and the kind of person one should be) instead of a list of legal specifications? Have you noticed that his instruction to Titus was not identical?”

I wonder if West thinks Jesus’ use of “water and the Spirit” in John 3:3-7 is just a “general description” of being “born again” or if they are to be considered as “legal specifications” before one is “born anew”? I wonder if brother West thinks that Peter’s use of Psalm 41:9 in Acts 1:16 is just a “general description?’ of the one who betrayed Jesus or does he consider it a “legal specification” of Judas himself? Does he think Jesus told Paul there was something he must do (Acts 9:6) as a “general description” or was it a “legal specification”? Honesty would demand Holt and West to teach I Timothy 3 and Titus I are items men must – of necessity – meet before they are qualified to be appointed as elders, or they must treat John 3:7; Acts 1:16; and Acts 9:6 the same way they mistreat 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, etc.

The quibble that the instructions in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus I not being identical is as easily answered as if he said the instructions in Acts 2:38 are not identical to Acts 16:31. Bob West ought to know we combine various passages to find the plan of salvation – it is not found altogether in one passage – and I’m sure he knows this! When we combine all the Scripture says about elders, we can know what God has taught concerning that subject. Some of that is elders are married men with children, and meet various other qualifications and that each congregation has a plurality of elders. This is what God has specified; it is not a general thing, but a must!

Guardian of Truth XXXIII: 11, p. 329
June 1, 1989