When God told Adam he would surely die if he transgressed His law, that is exactly what happened, and man has been a dying creature ever since. It is a weak and evil man that perverts God’s word. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” saith the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The Christadelphians as individuals or as a human organisation make no pretense or claim whatever to a divine appointment. Our contention is that the truth of the gospel calls the believers of it from out of the world to be servants of Christ ; that all who yield to the call become the called by reason of their belief and obedience; therefore they are candidates for the favor of Christ at His coming. We claim to know and believe this truth.
We do not claim any moral excellence or goodness for our organisation except the advantage of edification that comes from meeting together in peace and mutual fellowship. We do not set ourselves up as an official body. We are merely an aggregation of men and women believing the truth of God, striving to walk in the obedience of His commandments, and hoping in the mercy of God for that eternal life which He has predicated on such a course.
We have no churchly or clerical claims or titles, nor do we desire ecclesiastical recognition. If others believe in the same truth and walk in the same obedience, we are glad of it and claim their company under the law of Christ. If any object to the truth or refuse to be obedient, we withdraw from their company under the same law, not as an act of judgment toward those from whom we withdrew, but as a washing of our own hands of complicity in the disobedience to the will of God and the commandments of Christ. Thus we rest everything on the truth and nothing on our individual or corporate prerogative. The truth with us makes or unmakes; the organisation is an accident of the truth and not its governor or even official medium. Understood thus, the Christadelphians claim to be not the “chosen ones,” but the “called out ones” by reason of their understanding of the true teachings of God’s Holy Word.
We will admit all to our company and fellowship who can prove they are walking in belief and obedience to this truth. We acknowledge no other authority in matters of faith and practice than that of the mind of Christ expressed in the Holy Word. Our rule of interpretation is that nothing is to be received as truth which sets the New Testament against the Old Testament, or any text of these against another
An interpretation to he true must be in harmony and accord with the following: We believe in one God whom no man hath seen, who dwells in unapproachable light and who only hath immortality underived and inherent. We believe in “one Lord” named Jesus Christ who was the image of His Father manifested in sin’s flesh for the condemnation of sin in the flesh, who, after His resurrection, was made perfect and who, forty days afterwards, was taken up to the right hand of God. We believe that Jesus died for the offences of sinners and was raised again for the justification of believing men and women, and that these obtain justification by faith in the obedience of faith.
We acknowledge no other faith than the one faith which was deemed sufficient to save men in Paul’s day and no other hope than the one hope, the hope of Israel, for which he was a prisoner of bonds (Acts 28:20). We repudiate everything called baptism except the one baptism which we regard as a burial with Christ in water unto death to sin (Romans 6:3), in hope of resurrection from the dead (1 Cor. 15:39), the obedience of faith.
The things subjective of the one faith and the one hope we regard as the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, in harmony with the law of faith which saith, “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned.”
We maintain there is no immortality out of Christ, and the only way for a sinner to get into Christ is by understanding, believing and obeying the Gospel of the Kingdom preached by Jesus and the apostles.
We believe that it is knowledge that makes us responsible, “so that man that is in honor and understandeth not is as the beasts that perish” (Psalms 49:12 & 20).
We believe in the eternal punishment of the wicked, but not in their eternal torment. “The Lord preserveth all them that love Him: but all the wicked will be destroyed” (Psalms 45:20).
We believe in a devil or Satan, but not in the popular sense of these terms. Paul said in Hebrews 2 :14: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ also himself likewise took part of the same: that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil.” Now who hath the power of death ? Paul answers in Romans 6:23, where he says the wages of sin is death. The devil is the Scriptural personification of sin in the flesh.
We believe that hell, almost without exception, means grave. “Let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave” (Psalms 31:17).
We do not believe in going to heaven, but in heaven coming to us. “For the evildoers shall be cut off ; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth” (Psalms 37:9).
We believe that Jesus Christ will return from heaven and visibly appear and take up His residence on the earth a second time. “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16). We believe that when He returns He will sit upon the throne of His father David in Jerusalem and reign over the Kingdom of God and those who are His shall reign with Him. “He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of His father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1 :32,33). It will be a time of blessing to all the inhabitants of the earth because “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
“Behold a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment, and a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tern pest as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The eyes of them that see shall not dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart of the rash shall understand knowledge and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.”
“Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the myrtle and the oil tree and the pine tree and the box tree together. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”
Thus, we Christadelphians look forward to this blessedness which is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. “For no man cometh unto the Father but by me,” said Jesus, “and no man cometh unless the Father calleth.”
It is the truth of God’s Word that calls a man. God asks our faith in what He has declared, and in evidence of our faith, He asks obedience.
If we would be partakers of the promises of God, there are conditions. We must be like the Bercans who searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. When we have found out they are the Word of God, we must take hold and yield obedience to the command to be baptised for the remission of sins and thenceforth walk in patient continuance in well doing.
If such is our position, then the day of Christ will assuredly bring us glory, honor, immortality, association with Christ, in His reign on earth, and the possession of joy unspeakable forevermore.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One