By Bobby L. Graham
Synopsis: While the danger of apostasy is not new, many members of the Lord’s church are drifting. Why? Some are untaught. Some lack conviction. Like ancient Israel, some want to the like the surrounding nations.
Why are we hearing about so many Christians leaving the church for denominations?
This question, given to us by a young Christian, reminds us of the situation facing the Hebrew believers, if they abandoned Jesus Christ and His better covenant for the inferior things of the Old Covenant given through Moses. Who would willingly give up the types of the Old Testament for the antitypes of the New? Who would forfeit the realities associated with Christ for the shadows intended only to portray in faint outline form what was coming? It’s somewhat illustrated by the idea of a Cadillac sitting in a sunny place, and its moving shadow cast as the sun changes its position. Who would be pleased to accept the gift of the car’s shadow when the Cadillac moves away to some distant place? Would you stand in that shadow rejoicing that the car was yours, when all you had was its shadow, which has now slipped away with the moving of the car? Of course not!
Why would anybody be pleased to leave the church which has its origin in the eternal purpose of God (Eph. 3:10-11), has Jesus Christ as its spiritual head (Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18; Eph. 5:23-24), and is entered by divine addition upon obedience to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 2:47, 41, 38) to become part of something substituted by human beings in defiance of the authority of Christ, who is our Head, by supplanting the eternal wisdom of God and entered by altogether different terms of membership than those sanctioned by the Lord? What possible reasons could explain such an earth-shaking shift in one’s spiritual allegiance?
Popularity/praise of men, inferior wisdom of the world, so-called felt-needs of an earthly nature, and other such lower motivations (all of which come from unbelief) have often prompted the movements of people toward denominationalism. In contrast, when many of the early 1800s awakened from spiritual lethargy determined to leave their human denominations for the Lord’s church, they were attempting to restore the New Testament church to its rightful place in their lives and to restore the Bible to its rightful place in the hearts of men. They were not satisfied with the creeds and churches of which men had been the architects during the Protestant Reformation. Instead of leaving the denominations and going all the way back to Jerusalem to find the church of Christ as created by the Lord Himself, the reformers were content to stop at Rome and work merely around the fringes of the Roman Church to create something more pleasing to themselves. In their spiritual creations (Church of England/Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian), it is easy to see more resemblance to Rome than to Jerusalem. Although some came closer to Jerusalem than others did, none of them began in full submission to Jesus Christ, who has headship “over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22).
Whenever any motivation, besides this complete submission to Christ described in Ephesians 1:22, moves people to leave His church or to associate with other “churches,” such people are misguided—sometimes unknowingly, but at other times knowingly and willfully. Only the true gospel will rescue them and place them in the Lord’s true church.
