Scripture SAYS “If you accept my words, turning your ear to wisdom, and applying your heart to understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will find the knowledge of God” (Prov. 2:1-5 NIV). “If anyone choose to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching (doctrine) comes from God” (John 7:17 NIV). “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2 NIV). “Yet! reserve seven thousand in Israel – all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him” (I Kgs. 19:18 NIV).
True doctrine in a remnant?
As these texts are true, we expect to find sincere, prayerful seekers of Bible truth, like Dr. John Thomas, time and again through the ages of Jesus’ absence. This does not happen often, of course, since tradition so easily overwhelms truth. Yet Bible teaching being quite clear on the matter, Christadelphians do not claim they alone and uniquely hold all truth after the sectarian manner of the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists. In September of this year, I was researching material on the 17th century Brethren in Christ in a famous religious library in London. On the current periodicals shelf was a copy of a journal called Resurrection Magazine. This copy was dated August, 1998, and was volume 101 (it
likely started in 1897), number 2. Closer inspection revealed that it was published in Blacksburg, Virginia by the Pastors’ Library Foundation for The Resurrection Fellowship Ministries. I only had time to examine two or three recent issues, but here are a few of the titles of articles in these issues:
God is a Spirit.
The Father’s Regard for the Son.
Christ our Passover.
The Prophetic Perfect Tense.
After Death, what Follows?
Where is the Soul After Death?
Truth Trashed by Tradition.
The Abrahamic Promise.
Two Israels: One Olive Thee. The Antichrist.
Christian Life in the First Century.
Modernism: Old and New.
“Protestant” Reunion with Rome.
Worldly Music Invading Evangelical Churches.
Quotes from a recent issue
Dipping into just the August issue, here are some quotes.
‘God is a spirit,’ that is, an intelligent Being, a Being of reason, ‘and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth,’ that is, must worship Him intelligently, reasonably and truthfully. There is in this universe a living Being whom we call God, One to whom we may look in every hour of need, and one whom we may call ‘Our Father.”
“The Father did beget the Son, and Jesus was born ‘the Son of God.’ The confessions of Jesus during his earthly ministry reveal the closeness of the Father to the Son. The Son constantly resorted to the Father; he spoke to and relied upon his Father. Jesus did not pray out of formality. He was being sustained in his mission. This was a Father/Son relationship, requisite to the salvation of the world.”
“Always God must come first. If there are times when we focus more on God’s Son, that does not make him more important than the Father. Jesus himself said, ‘My Father is greater than I.”
“When we remember that the biblical penalty for sin is simply ‘death,’ we realize there is no foundation for the idea that the penalty is ‘everlasting torture.’ The ‘everlasting punishment’ of Matthew 24:46 is simply death, not perpetual punishing, because it is God’s law that is everlasting. Hence it is the fire that is everlasting, not the person’s term of punishment in it. Who would throw something foul or useless into a ‘furnace of fire’ intending to keep it alive there? The bad fish Jesus spoke about are discarded to get rid of them, so the wicked are to be destroyed by fire. In using the light of Holy Scripture to demolish the ‘hell’ invented by the creeds of Romanism and the Protestant establishments that copy them, we also expose the false teaching that the ‘saved’ dead go immediately to heaven (or purgatory, as Rome says) when they die. Scripture makes no difference: the ‘saved’ and the ‘unsaved’ go to the same place, the grave, until Resurrection Day.”
“Gehenna was the foul-smelling city dump of Jerusalem, swarming with rats and maggots, feeding upon the dead bodies of animals and abandoned criminals cast in there, and ever-burning with fires. The word gehenna was synonymous with total destruction.”
“The Abrahamic promise is the promise that eternal life in a real land, one that is sinless and deathless, would be the ultimate portion of Abraham and all those, of every nationality, whom God would count worthy on account of their faith. As we trace the subsequent unfolding of this promise in the Bible, we see that the fulfillment of the promise is unquestionably at the time of the Second Advent of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. This promise was not just to Abraham’s seed but to Abraham and his seed. Paul tells us that the promise to Abraham was that he should be the heir of the world The new creation referred to many times is the redemption of the redeemed to reign on the earth. What earth? Surely, this earth, made new. Is this not the ‘restitution’ spoken of by Peter, which ‘God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.’
“Sad to say, the modern Christian is taught that calling Jesus ‘Christ’ is simply another way of identifying him as a member of the Godhead co-equal and co-eternal with God the Creator. As taught by the Roman creeds, a ‘holy Trinity’ of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Two eternally co-existent beings, whether equal or not, cannot bear the relationship of Father and Son. Such double talk is characteristic of heathendom, but never of God. Those who cling to Rome’s dogma of the Holy Trinity are left between the horns of a hopeless dilemma: (1) If Jesus died at Calvary, the Creedal Holy Trinity is mere make-believe; (2) If Jesus did not die, being co-eternal with God, there is no redemption for man’s sin.”
“Worldly music produce worldliness. Most contemporary Christian music does not produce holiness of life.”
“This is the essence of modernism: to give priority to this world and especially man. The alternative is not asceticism nor a retreat from this world, but its conquest and transformation by the regenerating power of Jesus Christ and his atonement.”
Who are they?
These seem to be people of like spirit with ourselves, touched by the power of the Word of God and willing to stand apart from the vast Apostacy around us. I suspect that they know nothing of Christadelphians, as most of us know nothing of them. Only “the Lord knows those who are His.” Nonetheless, we would ask: if any readers have knowledge of this group of believers in Bible truths, I would deeply appreciate hearing from them.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One