I am happy to present this special issue of Truth Magazine as the first issue for 1980. We hope that this will mark the beginning of another exciting year for our readers as this weekly paper comes into their homes with material exalting and glorifying God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We plan to exalt the Christ through teaching His work with respect to every religious issue facing the world today.

The denominational world around us continues to minimize the importance of the blood-bought body of Christ. Denominational preachers continue to tell their members that they can be saved without ever becoming a member of any church; they tell them that they can stay saved without ever joining their particular denomination. Consequently, literally thousands of Americans who consider themselves to be Christians are deciding to be saved and go to heaven when they die without ever associating themselves with organized religion.

Added to this is the disgust which many feel toward organized religion. The average American is disgusted to see some of the things practiced in the name of the church which he sees going on around him. He sees drinking sanctified into a means of raising money for the church; he sees drinking sanctified by religious organizations which produce the product; he sees religion charlatans preying off the ignorance of the unlearned and milking their membership of thousands of dollars through "faith healing" which preys off those in destitute circumstances. Firms which should be paying taxes from the products which they market are excluded from taxation because they are "church" organizations. These things have caused many Americans to become disgusted with organized religion.

The result is that many are ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. The abuses of which denominationalism has been guilty have caused many to completely dismiss any need for the church. These abuses are generally the same apostasies which gospel preachers have been condemning for centuries. The time has come for men everywhere to reject modern denominationalism and return to the church which they can read about in the Bible - the blood-bought body of Christ!

With the hope that we can restore an appreciation for the church for which Jesus bled and died, we present this issue of Truth Magazine. We hope that you will read it and pass it on to your friends and neighbors. Through the proclamation of the word of God with reference to the church, may Christ be exalted and God glorified!

Truth Magazine XXIV: 1, p. 2
January 3, 1980