Pass on
the Torch: Carrying Forward the Spirit of Reformation
Our
God is a true and faithful God who keeps His promises forever sure and secure. In
the midst of spiritual perversion and deception, because of sinfulness of man
and craftiness of the devil, God protects and preserves the purity of His Word
and the gospel from one generation to another. Concerning God’s Word, the Lord
makes this promise, recorded in Psalm 12:6-7, “The words of the LORD are pure words:
as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep
them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” Again,
the Lord speaks through His prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 59:21, “As for me, this is
my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my
words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out
of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the
LORD, from henceforth and for ever.”
How
does the Lord protect and preserve the truthfulness of His Word and the purity
of the gospel? It is through His faithful church. R B Kuiper, a Reformed
theologian of the previous century wrote, “In this world, which under the spell of the
liar from the beginning has become a dark den of falsehood and deception, there
is one institution whose sole concern is to hold high the torch of God’s
special revelation. That distinction belongs to the Christian church” (The Glorious Body of Christ).
In
every generation, God seeks faithful men in the church to faithfully carry
forward the truth He has committed to the church. In the Old Testament, God
called Israel, and committed to them His Word, and He prepared faithful men
through all generations in the Old Testament to faithfully preserve the truth
or the testimony of God. In the midst of many unfaithful ones, God still had
His faithful remnants through His chosen prophets, priests, and kings. We have
the great testimony of Ezra, the Scribe, recorded in Ezra 7:10, “For Ezra had
prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in
Israel statutes and judgments.” Similarly, we see the same pattern in the New
Testament as well. The Apostles were specially chosen by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself
to carry faithfully forward the gospel legacy. They faithfully passed on the
words of Christ and the faithful church received them. The Apostle Paul records
the testimony of the Thessalonian church, “For this cause also thank we God
without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of
us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of
God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
This
means that every generation, in the church of God, has a responsibility to
leave behind a spiritual legacy as the torch of the truth of God needs to be
passed on. This legacy must be true to God’s Word and faithful to God’s will
and His plan for the church. The Apostle Paul instructed the young preacher Timothy
to faithfully pass on the gospel treasure he has received from the faithful men
of old. Paul says, “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in
Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses,
the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also”
(2 Timothy 2:1-2).
This
year being the 500th anniversary of the great Protestant Reformation
movement of the 16th Century, we would like to revisit the biblical
mandate for passing on the torch of God. It was the Reformation movement that
safeguarded the torch of the truth of God when there was spiritual darkness
everywhere due to the monopoly of the apostate Roman Catholic Church for many
centuries. The 16th Century Reformation was a God ordained movement
to liberate the true church from the wrong influence of the apostate religious
system, dominated by Rome, and to revive the true church with the truth of God.
We, the Protestant Christians, are the sons and daughters of the Reformation,
and therefore must stand up for the cause the Reformers stood, and we must
faithfully pass it on to the next generation.
Biblical
Pattern
It
was generally understood that for the early and medieval stage of the writing
and preservation of the Old Testament, it was done over three periods, namely,
Priestly (1450-400 BC), Scribal (400 BC-AD 500), and Masoretic (AD 500-1000).
Almost all of the Old Testament books were written during the first period. It
is called Priestly because the Levitical priests were given the charge of
safekeeping the Scriptures. After them came the Scribes, who were primarily
responsible for copying the texts from the autographs (the handwritten,
inspired, inerrant, original copies of the Scriptures). The Masoretes, who
followed the Scribes, were Jewish scholars who gave their lives for the
faithful transmission of the Word of God of the Hebrew text.
In
the Old Testament, God called the people of Israel and made them His chosen
people to be the custodian of the truth. God gave His revelation of the truth
to Moses and to the other prophets of old. The Apostle Peter reveals this, “Knowing
this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:20-21). When the Apostle
Paul was explaining the advantages the Jewish people were having, he reminded
them that God had committed with them His Word, “What advantage then hath the
Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because
that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:1-2). God gave the
true Israel the responsibility of safeguarding the truth. They were the
safe-keepers of the Old Testament Scripture. God then called a special group of
people in the Old Testament system, the Scribes, to meticulously copy the
Scriptures and to faithfully preserve them generation after generation. Ezra in
the Old Testament was a ready scribe, who committed his whole life for the
faithful transmission of God’s Word.
In
the New Testament, the church is described as “the pillar and ground of the
truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The function of the pillar is to uphold the
structures, and that of the ground is to provide a strong foundation. The
function of the church as the pillar and ground of the truth is therefore to
uphold the truth. The church is not to question the truth, but to accept the
truth. The church is not to add any new thing to the truth, but to receive it
faithfully and preserve it. The church in Thessalonica did the same thing, and
the Apostle Paul, who being their spiritual father, commended their
faithfulness to the Scripture, “For this cause also thank we God without
ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye
received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God,
which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). The
responsibility of the church is to faithfully interpret the truth, practice it,
and preserve it by passing it on to the next generation.
The
apostolic writings, which are recorded in the New Testament, are the very words
of God, which the Church received accordingly. The Apostle Paul affirms this in
many places of his writings. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 Paul says, “Moreover,
brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also
ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep
in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day
according to the scriptures.” Paul says the same in Galatians 1:11-12, “But I
certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after
man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the
revelation of Jesus Christ.” Further, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:10, 12-13, “But
God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things of God. . . . Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are
freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which
man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual
things with spiritual.”
Having
this thing in mind, the Apostle Paul reminds his spiritual son, Timothy, who
was appointed as a pastor to the church in Ephesus, “Thou therefore, my son, be
strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast
heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who
shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:1-2). Interestingly, one can
observe four generations of passing on the truth of God is mentioned here: from
Paul, to Timothy, from Timothy to faithful men, and from faithful men to others.
Paul speaks of “the things that thou hast heard of me.” The things Timothy heard
of Paul were the gospel truth of salvation and all the counsel of God that Paul
explained to Timothy time after time. In 2 Timothy 1:13 Paul mentions these as
“sound words”, “Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me,
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” The “sound words” are correct
biblical teachings that promote spiritual health. Timothy has to “keep” the
sound words, as Paul says to him in verse 14, “That good thing which was
committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.” Significantly,
one needs to note that the word “keep” (phylasso
in Greek) is a military term, meaning “guard” (same word is used in verse 12). This
means Timothy has to “keep on guard” what he has received of Paul and of the
forefathers, the Old Testament Scriptures, and the teachings of Christ and His
Apostles (2 Timothy 3:10-17). Having safe-guarded, he has to pass on “the same”
to faithful men that they would be able to pass on to others “the same.” What
an awesome responsibility God has entrusted with his faithful children!
Historical
Pattern
Today
the church has “the same” truth as God has providentially preserved His truth
through His faithful men throughout the history of the Church and passed on to
the present generation. What
Paul taught Timothy he also recorded in his epistles. What Paul taught Timothy
was not divorced from the Old Testament Scriptures but rooted in them, as his
epistles demonstrate. The rest of the New Testament Scriptures, not written by
Paul, complement what Paul taught and wrote. After the apostles have passed
away from the scene, three important developments took place: (1) the Holy
Spirit guided the early Christians to gather together the individual New
Testament books and identify them as canonical (authentic inspired writings)
and reject all non-canonical books; (2) the Holy Spirit guided the early Church
to preserve the New Testament writings by carefully copying down from the
original inspired writings (autographs); and (3) the church through various
Councils and Confessions/Creeds derived the doctrinal clarity for the faith and
practices of the church. God, through this process, has providentially
preserved the gospel truth till this generation and has passed on to our hands
the complete and perfect words of God and the truth of God.
For
the faithful transmission of the inspired and inerrant words of God (the
Bible), we believe that God through “His singular care and providence”
preserved the traditional family of text, known as the Byzantine family of text
or the Received Text (Textus Receptus)
or the Traditional Text against the corrupted Critical Text. Edward Hills
writes, “This is the text which was preserved by the God-guided usage of the
Greek Church. Critics have called it the Byzantine
text, thereby acknowledging that it was the text in use in the Greek Church
during the greater part of the Byzantine period (452-1453). It is much better,
however, to call this text the Traditional
Text. When we call the text found in the majority of the Greek New
Testament manuscripts the Traditional Text, we signify that this is the text
which has been handed down by the God-guided tradition of the Church from the
time of the Apostles unto the present day” (King
James Version Defended, 106.)
During
the medieval period of the Dark Ages, God has preserved the Traditional Text.
Hills further writes, “It was the Greek-speaking Church especially which was
the object of God’s providential guidance regarding the New Testament text
because this was the Church to which the keeping of the Greek New Testament had been committed. But this divine guidance
was by no means confined to those ancient Christians who spoke Greek. On the
contrary, indications can be found in the ancient New Testament versions of
this same God-guided movement of the Church away from readings which were false
and misleading and toward those which were true and trustworthy” (ibid.,
186-87.) This providence of God could be seen in the Syrian Church, Latin
Church, Coptic (Egyptian) Church, and in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th
Century. We thank the Lord for the King James Version Bible in the English
language which is a faithful translation from the Traditional Text.
For
the doctrinal purity, there were many Church councils met in the early period
of the Church history to discuss and debate on various theological issues, and
finally arrived at the correct understanding of the Scriptural teaching of
those issues. God raised many Church Fathers, such as, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo during the
first four hundred years of the Church history in order to preserve the purity
of God’s truth.
It
was during the great Reformation period that the purity of the gospel was
further preserved. When the stage for the Reformation was set in the Western
Europe, God in His providence enabled the reformers to have access to the
providentially preserved Greek manuscripts (hand-written copies) from the Greek
Church, and that sparked the flame of the Reformation. The Renaissance and the
invention of the printing press opened a new era of knowledge seeking and
propagation of the same. The new environment influenced people like William
Tyndale, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Theodore Beza, and many others to publish the
Greek and English Bibles. When Martin Luther came to the fore, in the early
part of the 16th Century, the ground work was done for him to take
the gospel movement forward. The Five Solas of
Reformation highlight the doctrinal stand of the reformers, namely, (1) Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone), (2) Sola Gratia (Grace Alone), (3) Sola Fide (Faith Alone), (4) Solus Christus (Christ Alone), and (5) Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone). To
this, the followers of John Calvin later added the Five Points of Calvinism,
known as the TULIP, namely, (1) Total Depravity (man by nature is totally
incapable of doing any good that would merit him salvation), (2) Unconditional
Election (a person comes to believe in God because God, in eternity past, out
of His absolute sovereignty, chose some to believe in Him), (3) Limited
Atonement (the effect of Christ’s death on the Cross, though sufficient for all
people, is efficient only to the elect of God), (4) Irresistible Grace (when
God, according to His sovereign election, effectually calls a sinner to bestow
upon him the gracious salvation, that person can never resist God’s gracious
offer of salvation) and (5) Perseverance of Saints (God preserves His elect person
as he responds to His salvation offer, and persevere till the end, enduring
temptation, fight the battle of faith, and obtain the final victory in the Day
of the Lord Jesus Christ). This shows how committed the reformers were for the
faithful preservation of the Word of God and to keep the doctrinal purity of
the Church intact.
For
the Reformation movement, God found men almost everywhere where He wanted to
reform the church. If Luther was for Germany, in England it was William
Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, and the English Puritans. Simultaneously, there was
Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin for Switzerland, John Knox for Scotland, and
John Calvin for France as well. The English Puritans like John Owen, Thomas
Watson, and many others further took the movement into the 16th and
17th Centuries. For the 18th Century, God prepared men
like the Wesley brothers, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, and
Jonathan Edwards. Through their faithful preaching and teaching of God’s truth,
there was great spiritual revival and awakening brought into the English
speaking world, both in Europe and North America. This was the time the gospel
missions movement started to spread the Word across the continents. The Word of
God, from the faithful family of text, was faithfully translated into the many
vernacular languages by the missionaries who travelled to the four corners of
the earth. Providentially, the echo of the Reformation reached India as well
through the Baptist missions, and we want to thank the Lord for the work of
William Carey and many other missionaries who faithfully translated the Bible
into the local languages.
Then
in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Church
witnessed the attack of the Liberalism, Modernism, and later, Pentacostalism/Charismaticism.
This was the time the Lord raised the great Princeton Seminary in the United States
and there were 5 great Princeton Scholars, all Reformed Theologians, to
preserve the Reformed Faith and take it forward. They were Archibald Alexander
(the Founder and First Principal of Princeton), Charles Hodge (who succeeded A
Alexander as the Second Principal), A A Hodge (who followed the father’s
footsteps), Benjamin Warfield, and J Gresham Machen. From 1812 till 1929, they
ruled the Princeton. They were all not only great teachers of the Word, but
also men with sharp pen, and they were able to produce great works to defend
the Reformed Faith. Both the father and son Hodges wrote the Systematic
Theology volumes, Warfield wrote Counterfeit
Miracles, Inspiration and the
Authority of the Bible, and Machen wrote What is Faith, Christianity
and Liberalism, and The Virgin Birth of Christ, to name only a few.
Later Machen had to leave Princeton due to the
influence of the Liberalism at Princeton, and as a result, he established the
Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).
Carl McIntire, who was his student at that time, also joined him in the effort
of preserving the purity of the gospel against the onslaught of the Liberalism.
(Liberalism questioned the Five Fundamentals of the Christian faith, namely, the
Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Blood Atonement
of Christ, the Bodily Resurrection of Christ, and the Inerrancy and
Infallibility and the faithful preservation of the Word of God). The history of
the church witnessed the rise of Ecumenism at that time with the effort of uniting
the church under one roof, and that way trying to take the Protestant church
back to the Roman Catholicism, and inviting people of other faiths into
dialogues and co-operations. Pluralism—all faiths lead to salvation—was their
mantra. McIntire vehemently opposed this, and to take the battle of biblical
purity forward, he established the Faith Theological Seminary and the
Bible-Presbyterian Church (BPC). Oliver Buswell and Allan MacRae joined him,
but later Buswell left to start Covenant Theological Seminary, and MacRae to
Biblical Theological Seminary.
Simultaneously God also raised several men,
theologians and preachers, to preserve the pure gospel, and to pass on the
gospel torch to the generation in the 21st Century. Following is a
selected list of those great men of faith, of whom some have gone to the other
shore, having completed their task, and others still labor on: Martin Lloyd
Jones, A W Pink, William Barclay, Louis Berkhof, William Hendrikson, Loraine
Boettner, Calf F Henry, John Murray, Ian Murray, Roger Nicole, Cornelius Van
Til, Anthony A Hoekema, Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Spurgeon, Peter Masters, John
Witcomb, John Davis, Timothy Tow, RC Sproul, James Montgomery Boice, Joel Beeke,
etc.
Timothy Tow from Singapore was a student of
Carl McIntire at Faith Seminary, who later came back to Singapore to establish
the Bible-Presbyterian churches in the Far Eastern region, and a Reformed Bible
Seminary. By God’s providence, in 1990, I got the privilege of learning
Reformed theology from him when I became his student at the Far Eastern Bible
College, Singapore. In my early years, I was also mentored by Bishop M K Koshy
(St Thomas Evangelical Church of India), who was also a student of Carl
McIntire at Faith Seminary.
Present
Condition and Need
Today is an age of great spiritual perversion
and apostasy (falling away from the truth). The Apostle Jude warned the church
about the prevailing situation, recorded in Jude 4-16. Jude says, “For there
are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this
condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness,
and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 4). These are
not new things, but happened in the past as well, among God’s own people as the
Prophet Ezekiel explains it in Ezekiel 22:23-29.
It
is a tragedy that today many Christian churches, denominations, and Bible
colleges and seminaries have neglected or conveniently avoided this paramount
responsibility of preserving the purity of the gospel and faithfully passing on
to the next generation. The talk out there in the church today is for
ecumenical unity, a pluralistic unity of the church where Catholics and
Protestants work hand in hand regardless of the cardinal doctrinal differences.
This unity also aims at reaching out to other religions through dialogues to
find a common platform for a unity of all faiths. This is a very dangerous
trend that these churches that promote such an ecumenical unity may become not
being a church.
Kuiper rightfully explains the
present plight of the Church, “There have been times in the history of the
church when it took that task seriously. During the first centuries of the
Christian era and again in the age of the Protestant Reformation the church was
much more concerned about the truth than about its own immediate peace and
prosperity. The truth was dearer to the hearts of men than were their
possessions, their lives, even their wives and children. In comparison, how sad
is the church’s plight today! The cancer of doctrinal indifference is gnawing
at its vitals. The insistent and wide-spread demand for church union and the
truly tremendous emphasis on ecumenism are in many instances symptoms of that
disease. And instead of casting out deniers of such cardinal Christian truths
as the Holy Trinity, the deity of Christ and the substitutionary atonement, the
church often bestows upon them its highest honors. Thus it has come to pass
that in numerous instances the church, having ceased to contend for the faith
once for all delivered to the saints, has ceased being the church.” (The Glorious Body of Christ). As people give so much
emphasis on Christian unity among the many denominational churches today, may
we be remembered that this unity can be possible only if we have the truth of
God preserved through our churches.
In
the midst of the spiritual perversion we see in the present day, will the Lord
continue preserving His Church? Kuiper observes, “Will the church pass out of existence
and the truth fail? No, never! The Spirit of truth will abide with and in the
church forever (John 14:16). One denomination after another may become a false
church, but there will always be a remnant according to the election of grace.
The pillar and ground of the truth cannot be destroyed. Not even the gates of
hell surpass it in strength. God Almighty Himself will see to it that His
church continues to the end of time as custodian of the truth. Martin Luther
was right when he sang:
And though this world with devils filled
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The church that has grown indifferent to the
truth is, to put it mildly, on its way out. And the church that knowingly
tolerates in its midst denial of the basic truths of the Word of God is itself
guilty of such denial and by that very token has ceased being a true church. A
church with a large membership, an imposing edifice, an elaborate ceremonial,
an efficient organization and dignified vestments, but without the truth, is
not a church. On the other hand, a church with a numerically negligible
membership, with no building other than a lean-to, with the simplest order of
worship, with a minimum of organization and with no clerical vestments at all,
is a church of Jesus Christ if only it is loyal to the truth” (ibid.)
Our Task
Now, the most important question is where do we
go from here? And the answer is: we need to carry forward the spirit of
Reformation! For the present generation, it is our responsibility to stand up
for the truth of God. The Apostle Jude reminds the Christians of his time, “Beloved,
when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was
needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly
contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Later
Jude exhorts them, “But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken
before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there
should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly
lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the
Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a
difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating
even the garment spotted by the flesh” (Jude 17-23).
What Jude exhorts Christians in his epistle is
the need of the hour for the Christian church today! We should not be
Christians for convenience sake, just going to church as tradition requires of
us, but with a total indifference and carelessness to what the Lord truly
requires of us. Contrary, we need to be Christians with great commitment to
make a difference in our own lives and to the lives of the people around us.
This can be possible only through the pure gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
we need to be earnestly contending for this gospel. Paul exhorts the
Philippians church, “Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of
Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your
affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for
the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27).
In order to realize this, a generation of godly
men and women to be prepared in our midst. How much do we care for the
spiritual wellbeing of our children? Do they know their Lord and Savior? Do
they read their Bible regularly? Do you inject a desire in them to serve the
Lord, some even for the fulltime service of the Lord, to be fulltime pastors
and elders of the church? For that reason, do you dedicate your children or you
only want them to be doctors and engineers? Do you care for your sons and
daughters to defend the faith “once delivered unto the saints,” “with one mind
striving together for the faith of the gospel”?
Conclusion
Today,
we, the Protestant Christians, are the sons and daughters of the Reformation,
and therefore, we cannot ignore the spiritual legacy faithfully passed on to us
by the faithful and courageous labor of our forefathers in the faith. As true
and faithful Christians, we should stand up for the truth of God, faithfully
learn it, practice it, and teach it to the present generation, so that the true
spiritual legacy can be preserved from this generation to the next, and to the
generations to come. It is the responsibility of every Christian, making sure
that he is the faithful remnant, faithfully carrying forward the true biblical
legacy. For this, he needs to be associated with a doctrinally sound,
Bible-believing, and Bible-practicing church, where God’s Word is faithfully
preached, taught, practiced, and preserved. This is our desire and commitment
at Covenant, Bangalore, and for this reason that we have started the ministry
of the Reformation Now publication
five years ago. As the Christian church celebrates the Five Hundredth
Anniversary of the Reformation Movement this year, we, through the special editions of the Reformation Now, want to challenge the Christian
church to stand up for faithfully taking the spirit of the Reformation movement
forward.
When so much distortion from the truth was
happening in the Kingdom of Israel, as the people of God forsook God, and went
after their own convenience, God spoke through prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah
5:1, “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and
know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be
any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.”
Later, the prophet Ezekiel wrote the words of the Lord, “And I sought for a man
among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for
the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none” (Ezekiel 22:30). God
is looking for a man! What are the things God looks for in that man? He must be
a man of the Book (the Word of God), a man of the gospel (grasp of the gospel),
a man of true life (character), a man of Christ (true love and compassion), and
a man of prayer (complete surrender to the will of God). Will you be that man
whom the Lord is looking for in this generation for the gospel truth to be faithfully
practiced and preserved? Will your son or daughter be that person? Will your
church be the church which the Lord is looking for in order for the Word of God
to be faithfully safeguarded and passed on? May the Lord help us!
No comments:
Post a Comment