Question: Do the elders of a congregation have the right to “legislate” where God has not legislated? Do they have the right to expect compliance in matters of opinion? And is one guilty of sin if he chooses not to heed the elders’ advice in matters of judgment? Answer: The Lord has given elders the responsibility of overseeing his church (Acts 20:28). That involves protecting, feeding, leading and serving as good stewards of that with which God has entrusted them, knowing that some day they must give account for the souls in their care (Hebrews 13:17). Consequently, God has charged the church with the responsibility to love, honor, submit and obey those who watch out for their souls (Hebrews 13:17; 1 Timothy 5:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:13). But the question is raised, “Do I have to obey the elders in matters of judgment, matters of opinion, in matters of expediency?” My reply would be, if not in these areas, then where and when would you be required to obey and submit to them? In matters of doctrine, God has already legislated. Elders have no right to add to or take away from the doctrine of Christ already revealed. We don’t obey the elders in matters of doctrine, we obey the Lord. The only other realm in which we can obey the elders is in matters of opinion or expediency. But someone objects, “If we must obey the elders in matters of opinion, then in order to go to heaven, some must meet stricter …

[Brother Lewis is a 14-year-old who plans on devoting his life to the service of God as a Gospel preacher. The following article evidences the good beginning he has already made in his community and through the printed word. ~ Editor] As generations come and generations go, the debate on the historical truth regarding the resurrection of Christ will grow more and more heated. We must know what to say when we are faced with questions about the greatest event in history. Below are four historical facts that prove that this great event actually did take place. Fact #1: The Place Where Jesus Was Buried Was Known. After his death, Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathaea. Along with this the location of the tomb was known, meaning that the disciples could not proclaim his death in Jerusalem if the tomb had not been empty. In other words, people knew where the tomb was. So if the disciples went around proclaiming that Jesus had risen, they would have been deemed as crazy  if the body of Jesus were still in its tomb. Being that people knew where Jesus had been buried, the claim of his resurrection could be accepted as truth. Fact #2: Jesus’ Tomb Was Found Empty. On the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by two of his women followers. This being the case, something happened to the body of Jesus. Whether it was stolen or resurrected will not be discussed in …

Have you ever watched a sporting event, especially football, and seen this painted on a large poster board? As the kicker prepares to propel the ball through the vertical yellow uprights, some fan (or three) is holding such a sign. The professional football season is nigh, and I’m sure there will be no lack of this “reminder from the end zone” in the days to come. Why this sign is held up for millions of television-viewing fans to see? I am going to assume it makes reference to one of the most dearly beloved and persuasive passages in all the Holy Scriptures: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). In my estimation, that is a great passage concerning salvation. But have you noticed nobody ever posts one for earlier verses in the same chapter, such as “John 3:3-5!” If one concerns salvation, does not the other? If not, why? Also, since about 98% of football games are played between 1:00 and 8:00 on Sunday afternoon, I can’t help but wonder if these sign-bearers exchanged worship for personal entertainment on Sunday to deliver their message? Let me draw your focus now to another “3:16”: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” This is a tremendous “3:16” passage concerning the usefulness and divine origin of the Word of …

With all my learning (?) at age 20, in a Bible class in Urbana, Illinois, in 1931, when sister Bert Gerrard asked the meaning of “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), I said that the passage does not command that we pray all of the time, but that we must always be in the attitude of prayer. She replied, “In the baseball game at the church fellowship in the park, when you slid into second base, you were not in a prayerful attitude.” The lady had me. I needed to do more study on prayer. Paul’s inspired word adialeiptos, translated “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17, KJV), occurs in three other New Testament passages: “God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers” (Romans 1:9, KJV). “Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father” (1 Thessalonians 1:3, KJV). “For this cause also we thank God without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 2:13, KJV). The word adialeiptos is threefold: (1) the first a is called an “alpha privative” (Classic Greek Dictionary 11), meaning the rest of the word is not true; (2) dia in context means “to”; (3) leiptos means “desert, abandon, forsake, leave behind” (409). Hence 1 Thessalonians 5:7 means that prayer is not to be deserted, abandoned, forsaken, left behind, but is to be a permanent part of a Christian’s life, never to …

As Christians we understand that it is impossible to separate faith from life. Every aspect of life is impacted by faith. Faith dictates conduct. The Scriptures could not be clearer. Paul wrote to the church at Philippi: Only let your conversation [conduct] 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). There it is. Conduct must be governed by the Gospel. Religion is validated not simply by what we say but by what we do. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world (James 1:27). The apostle John asked: But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? (1 John 3:17). He then went on to admonish: My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18). It is not enough to talk a good religion, we must live it! Faith dictates how we deal with each other. It was Jesus who said, Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12). Believers understand …

To the superficial mind, the question might be raised, “How could a person buy something if no one sold?” But the thing of which Solomon spoke in Proverbs 23:23 is not a commercial venture. Our liberty was bought with the blood of our forefathers, and our Christian heritage was bought with the blood of the martyrs, but no person sold it to us. The importance of that precept seems increasingly important as we see a number of men who at one time seemed to exalt truth, but who have sold out for some reason or another. When Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32), he expressed a principle of the widest application. Knowledge of historic truth can make us free from having to repeat the same mistakes over and over. Knowledge of scientific truth can make us free from superstition in those areas, and free to explore in all sorts of areas heretofore inaccessible. Economic truths can make us free from poverty. Medical truth can make us free from various kinds of diseases. Moral and ethical truths can make us free from many of the social ills that plague our nation. Religious truth can make us free from the love, practice, guilt, burden, stain and the punishment of sin. But when Jesus used the word “shall,” he did not mean that it was an automatic or predetermined reality. That is, “You shall know the truth” in no way means you are …

[A previous article by brother West entitled “Does God Exist” appeared in the February 2004 issue of Gospel Gazette Online.] The universe in which we live needed a Cause to come into existence. We affirm that for the universe to continue to exist it needs a Cause at this very moment. Something is needed to keep our universe and us in existence so that neither it nor we will disappear. Something not only caused the universe to come into existence, but something conserves it in the present time. In Colossians 1:17, Paul spoke to this matter when he said,“And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” The universe needs both an originating Cause and a conserving Cause, and this is the reason there is something rather than nothing. Let us look at it in this way. Finite (limited) and changing things exist. For example, just look at yourself. You have to exist in order to deny that you exist, so either way you must really exist. Furthermore, in the existence that you experience both yourself and the things around you constantly change. As Henry Lite, in his famous song put it, “Change and decay in all around I see…” Once we were children, then we became parents, then our children became parents, and we were grandparents, etc. We, like the universe in which we live, are limited and changing. Every finite (limited) and changing thing must be caused by something else. If a thing is limited and if it changes, then it …

We moved. We packed up 18 years of living, put it in a U-Haul truck and moved to another state. Some might say, “Big deal,” because in our “mobile” society packing up and moving from place to place is a way of life for some folks. Not us. We’re the homebody types. We’re the ones who live in Hometown, USA all of their lives. We’re the stable ones who are involved in so much that we couldn’t possibly pack up and move because it would leave so much stuff out of whack. But we did just that. After months of prayerful thought and long discussions with my wife, I decided to look for a new job. Thanks to the Internet and e-mail I found a transfer to a new job in just a couple of months, in another state. Now the work had to start. In just two short weeks we packed up all of our belongings, sold our home, said goodbye to our family and friends, and moved to a place where we didn’t know a soul. We did all of this so fast that I don’t think the reality of it all has sunk in yet. But as our first week in our new home came to an end and things began to slow down a bit, I began to study what impact this move may have on our lives. We know that there will be new friends, new contacts and new opportunities coming our way. Our move …

A friend of mine made the statement that if one does something in religion and one’s conscience doesn’t offend him, that religious act is acceptable to God. No doubt this is the general belief among many people today. Most of us have seen the scene of an angel and a devil vying at the same time for the control of a person’s conscience and actions. It is agreed that the conscience is a guide in religious matters. Even in the realm of opinions a person must not act contrary to his/her conscience, otherwise it becomes a sin. This would be the understanding of what Paul wrote in Romans 14:23, “But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.” While the conscience is recognized as a guide, the question is, can it be trusted as the acceptable authority in religious matters? The “Conscience is the testimony and secret judgment of the soul, which gives its approbation to actions that it thinks good, or reproaches itself with those which it believes to be evil; or, it is a particular knowledge which shows us what is good, or evil; and conscience tells us when we have done the one or the other” (Cruden’s Complete Concordance). We should note carefully that the conscience does not make laws and regulations but rather it simply abides by what it has been taught, whether good or bad. The conscience simply informs a …

Often we hear the argument (and see the results) that Christianity does not exist by the keeping of law but by applying the principles of law as one personally sees fit and more fully appreciates. This allows for all kinds of activities foreign to the New Testament pattern for worship and personal conduct. This belief and practice is argued by misapplication of such Scripture as Galatians 5:1: “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage” (ASV). So, the conclusion is drawn that a Christian is not under law, but is free to live, act and worship in principle according to his/her freewill choice. The results of this false concept of “under no law in Christ” is seen in loose living that differs little, if any, from many non-Christians, and accentuates the current philosophy that allows one to do as one pleases. It is the idea that “If it feels good it can’t be wrong.” So, sexual immorality, divorce and remarriage for any cause, drinking, gambling — you name it — occurs, often with impunity, among those professing to be Christians. Another result of this false concept of “under no law in Christ” is the common engagement in worship activities that titillate feelings and desires far more closely connected with the “outward man” with its appetites and passions than with the “inner-man” (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:16). This comports with the current desire to be entertained in worship, to “get …

[Gospel Minutes. 1 March 2002: 1-3.] “And if I say, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain” (Jeremiah 20:9). In the Book of Jeremiah, we read of a boiling pot, a fiery prophet and the fierceness of God’s wrath against Judah. The boiling caldron represented the teeming horde of Babylon, sent by Jehovah as a judgment upon the iniquity of his people. The stalwart prophet was Jeremiah, whose lips had been touched by the Lord and thus Jeremiah had to tear down the false standards of a disobedient and gainsaying Judah. Judah Was a Gad-About Bride Those who should have wept were instead giddy with their reveling over the altars in the groves. The summer of their discontent had blended into the autumn of defeat, and the gates of Babylon beckoned to that reprobate generation. Soon would they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137:4) to the tempo of a heart that had been broken and contrite far too late to avail for Judah’s deliverance from captivity. Judah had turned from the Great Physician to search in vain for balm in Gilead. No wonder that Jeremiah’s tears flowed like a waterfall. His lamenting over the city of God had just about reached its piercing crescendo when the vile Jehoiakim ascended the throne. False …

The following is a segment of an actual letter given to me. I share your desire to spread the gospel. However, since you are new to our area, I feel that you should know a few things. I believe that all members of our congregation want everyone to learn the gospel. We also want our minister and his wife to be respected by all people of the community. We’re a small Southern town with some old Southern ideas. In our town it takes great effort not to offend people but there are ways of doing things without causing outrage. I speak for several members in saying that your intense work among the Blacks may have a reverse effect on the white people in our area. I would like for you to keep in mind that this is not heaven, we are not all alike, and we can see each other’s differences. None of us are perfect and it’s only in God’s eyes that we are all the same. I have been privy to many racially charged comments and jokes from the mouths of Christians. These comments have been from both blacks and whites and have echoed the culture of these individuals. Yet, they rationalized and justified each until they safely removed the pangs of guilt. In Galatians 2:9ff, we find Peter and Paul in an interesting situation. Peter was dining with Gentile Christians until Jewish Christians entered the room, and Peter got up to go and sit with “his people,” …

Not everybody in the first century wanted to hear what the apostle Paul had to say. Many, in fact, were in such opposition to the Gospel that they went out of their way to hinder its proclamation. Persecution, in its various forms, often followed Paul’s evangelistic endeavors. For instance, when he and Barnabas preached in Antioch on their first missionary tour, Scripture says, “…The Jews…were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul” (Acts 14:45). Of course, this antagonism didn’t stop here; verbal opposition was followed by physical expulsion. “But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region” (Acts 14:50). From Antioch, the two men made their way to Iconium, but once again they were met with strong resistance. “…The unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren…But the multitude of the city was divided: part sided with the Jews, and part with the apostles. And when a violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to abuse and stone them, they became aware of it and fled.” (Acts 14:3, 4-5). When the pair started their work in Lystra, persecution took a decidedly brutal form. “Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead” …