VOICES FROM THE PAST

Which Church Is Right? (Luther Blackmon,
Gospel Guardian, July 8, 1965)

"Suppose that some eligible bachelor should announce
that tonight he is getting married and tomorrow he is
going to start looking for a woman to be his wife; and
that, furthermore, it will make no difference which
woman he chooses, since one is as good as another. You
would either laugh at his joke or would think that somebody
ought to call the men with the net and put him away. Yet,
that sort of reasoning is right up to date in religion.
You are "saved" and then pick out the church you want to
join, and one is as good as another.

Everyone understands that when you are "married" you have
a wife, right then and there, and don't need to look any
further. The ceremony that marries a man to a woman makes
that woman his wife. Whatever it takes to get married, that's
the very thing it takes to get a wife. It is impossible to
be married and not have a wife - if you are a man, of course.
And one is not married to just any woman; he is married to
one woman, his wife.

Just so, it is impossible to be saved and not be in the
church; because the same thing that saves one, puts him into
the church. Whatever it takes to save a person, that's what 
it takes to put him into the church. And he is not a member
of just any church, he is a member of the Lord's church.

The church is the family of God, 1 Timothy 3:14-15.
"... the house (household-family) of God which is the
church of the living God." And, "For this cause I bow my
knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom
the whole family in heaven and on earth is named."
(Ephesians 3:14) Paul is here writing to the Ephesian
church, and the theme of the Ephesian letter is the church
- Christ and the church. The church is the family of God.
When one is born of God, born again, he is born into the
family of God, of course. Therefore when one is born again
- saved - he is by that very act a member of the family
of God, the church. You can't be saved and be out of the
church anymore than you can be married and not have a wife."
(Gospel Truths, April 1995)

THIS WEEKS MEMORY VERSE *******

"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother,
he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen?"   (1 John 4:20)