God’s Organized Church
Vs. Stray Offshoots
God always has had an organized church,
a people who KEEP His commandments without stray offshoots, one here and one
there. When Jesus gathered out those who would take the gospel to the world and
formed them into home churches, they were organized under Him. He did not
consider such as being stray offshoots.
In every succeeding generation,
God’s True Reformers have had to leave the church of their fathers, because of
apostasy and because the leaders would not tolerate light, and God did not
consider them stray offshoots.
God’s Word says that where two
or three meet who keep the commandments of God, there God’s presence is, and
only His presence can constitute a church. There is
a people who claim to keep God’s
commandments, while grossly disobeying them and imbibing serious, unpardonable
sin apostasy. All such ones are stray offshoots. They have strayed from the
test of Isaiah 8:20.
Act
16:32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his
house.
Act
16:34 And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and
rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.
Act
16:40 And they went out of the prison, and entered
into [the house of] Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted
them, and departed.
Act
18:7 And he departed thence, and entered into a
certain [man's] house, named Justus, [one] that worshipped God, whose house
joined hard to the synagogue.
Rom
16:5 Likewise [greet] the church that is in their house. Salute my well beloved
Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ.
1Cr
1:11 For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them [which are
of the house] of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.
1Cr
16:15 I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the firstfruits
of Achaia, and [that] they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the
saints,)
1Cr
16:19 The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute
you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.
Paul left
"And
as they persisted in their rejection of the gospel the apostle (Paul) went into
the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and
persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when divers were
hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he
departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school
of one Tyrannus." Acts, 19:8, 9.
When
any church commits apostasy, God’s
presence departs. The only master in such a case is Satan. Any once
church that forms a new movement that removes God by removing pillar doctrines,
is no longer God’s church, no matter whether or not
they were once God’s chosen people. Jesus proved all of the above with His
first “chosen” people, the Jews.
~rwb