Truth Magazine

By Clarence R.Johnson

James writes, “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works” (James 2:18). Is it possible to show faith without works? Consider the 11th chapter of Hebrews. The only way Noah could show his faith was to “move with fear” and build the ark (vs. 7). The only way Abraham could show his faith was to obey God (vs. 8). The same is true of the other “heroes of the faith” mentioned in this chapter. Can any man give evidence of faith without actively serving God? I deny that such is possible. I challenge anyone to show real evidence of his trust in God outside of the deeds he does in submission to God’s will.

Some say they have faith in the promises of God (Matt. 18:20; John 12:26), yet fail to attend most of the Bible classes and the Sunday evening evangelistic services. Does their absence show faith? Or does it not rather show a lack of faith? Show me your faith without works (Can it be done?) and I will show my faith by my works.

Virtually all brethren say they believe that it is important for an individual to study and understand the will of God, then to obey it. Do you agree? And do you do it? Or do you “say and do not” (Matt. 23:3)? Do you pass up most opportunities to study the Bible with other Christians, then fail to even read the scriptures at home, or, at best, only read occasionally and haphazardly? Do you neglect private prayer? Does your family give thanks at meal-time? Are you as concerned that your children prepare their lessons for the Bible classes as you are that they complete their homework assignments for school? “Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.”

Does your language show that you are a Christian? Have you put away lying, slander, etc.? Do you use God’s name only in reverence? Or does thy speech betray thee?

Is your life a continual confession of your faith in Jesus Christ? He warns that to be ashamed of Him in this wicked and adulterous generation is to cause Him to be ashamed of us in the day of judgment (Mark 8:38). Do you show your faith by your works, or do the actions of your life betray a lack of real Bible faith? Are you a doer of the word, and not a hearer only (James 1:22ff) or do you “say and do not”?

One “follower of God” who continually sets the wrong example before others can do more harm to the cause of Christ than 1,000 atheists actively opposing God with all their might. Christ warns, “Woe unto you. . . hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in” (Matt. 23:13).

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 525-526
August 19, 1976

By Larry Ray Hafley

QUESTION:

From Alabama: “The church I attend has been in existence for nearly 30 years. We don’t have elders and have never had them. This bothers me. Shouldn’t a church have elders after 30 years?”

REPLY:

It is not the purpose of this column to pronounce judgment on local situations. It is difficult for an “insider” to know all the facts and circumstances. An “outsider” like myself cannot be expected to accurately and correctly diagnose and deal with a specific point of reference. However, a few general thoughts may be helpful.

What The New Testament Teaches

The New Testament teaches that churches should have elders (Acts 14:23; 20:17, 28; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:2). God’s order is for a plurality of scripturally qualified men to feed, lead, watch, and warn souls in each local church (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 5:17; Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2, 3). The work charged to elders reveals that no flock of God can be perfect or complete until it has elders or overseers (Titus 1:5). Therefore, no church of God should be satisfied without elders whether it be 30 months old or 30 years of age.

No Qualified Men

The New Testament clearly teaches that only a certain class of men can be bishops or elders (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1). Qualifications necessarily make it impossible for every church to appoint men as elders. God does not place standards in operation and expect that each church will always be capable of meeting them. For example, there must be two or more men willing to serve (1 Tim. 3:1, 2; Acts 14:23). These facts eliminate some small churches. As only qualified men should serve, it follows that a church should not appoint men when they have none who meet the scriptural specifications.

Excuses Or Extenuating Circumstances?

After an indefinite period of time, it appears a church should grow and develop men as elders. Surely, after 30 years a church might be expected to have elders, but there may be various reasons and excuses. Some are justifiable while others are suspect at best.

First, some churches have a high population “turnover” rate. The membership is not the same for very long due to families moving in and out every few years. Second, divisions, both the necessary and the unnecessary kind, may be instrumental in stripping a church of potential eldership timber. Third, some congregations never seriously consider the need for elders. Unappointed “leaders” become old and feeble. Meanwhile, young people are marrying and moving away. Now, most all that are left are a few sweet elderly widows and several failing and feeble older couples. The younger couples who do remain are wondering, “Why have we never had any elders here?” The truth is that the church just did not seek the New Testament pattern with respect to elders. Fourth, no teaching is ever done to encourage a man to become an elder. Is it a sin to urge a young, faithful man to consider the office or work of a bishop? Waiting until a man is 45 years old before asking him to “consider being an elder” is foolish and wasteful. We guide men to equip themselves as preachers, so why not as elders? Fifth, some churches can find no men who desire the work of elders. Why is it that able and generally faithful men to not aspire to preach or be elders? Does the fault lie within me? Often men may be discouraged because of the abuses they see heaped on elders by tyrannical preachers and mean members of the church.

Four Classes

Essentially, there are four classes or kinds of church organization. A church may be:

1) Scripturally Unorganized: This condition exists where there are no men qualified to serve and none are serving. This was the early state of the churches mentioned in Acts 14:21-23. At first, the new converts were likely not in accord with the qualifications of elders. Upon Paul’s return, certain ones were appointed, but prior to this time they (the churches) were scripturally unorganized.

2) Scripturally Organized: A church is scripturally organized when it has qualified men who desire to serve and who are appointed. This was the status of the Philippian church (Phil. 1:1). This level of development is no accident. It is the result of purposeful and prayerful teaching and living. Not every church that has men called “elders” and “deacons” is scripturally organized. They have men who are merely going through the motions, but who are not watching for souls. Their elders are elders in name only. They wear a title, but they do no work. As it takes more than the name “church of God” to make a church of God, so it takes more than “elders and deacons” to have a scripturally organized congregation.

3) Unscripturally Organized: A church is unscripturally organized when it has no men qualified to take the oversight but who are doing so nonetheless. This was the sad plight of the church where Diotrephes ruled and reigned (3Jn. 9). That church was unscripturally organized. This is why many churches have no elders. A dictator or a clique runs the church, or else the church has always relied on a pastor-preacher to be chairman of the board. This is a sad situation. It restrains many churches from progressing to scriptural organization.

4) Unscripturally Unorganized: A church may be termed unscripturally unorganized when it has men who are qualified to serve but who are not appointed and laboring. Jealousy, envy, and apathy are often the causes of a church’s being unscripturally unorganized. When men are not submissive to the leadership of elders, when they fear the subjection that is required, they will see to it that a church remains unscripturally unorganized by dictatorially forbidding the appointment of elders. This they do through party-power politics.

Conclusion

Scriptural congregational organization should characterize every church. But even after 30 years do not appoint men hastily. If you think a church without elders is bad and unscriptural, just appoint unqualified, half-hearted servants. Two wrongs do not make a right. Churches suffer without qualified elders, but they are doubly pained if they select men just for the sake of saying, “Well, now we have elders.” Further, remember that it is a work, not a political office, that you are appointing men unto. It is an awesome task and should be approached with reverence and godly fear.

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 524-525
August 19, 1976

By Raymond E. Harris

In Ezekiel 34, God calls the leaders of Israel to account for their contribution to the sin and ruination of His people. The shepherds of the flock of God have been negligent. Their unskillfulness, unfaithfulness, inefficiency and treachery is exposed and rebuked.

The shepherds of the Master’s flocks have the great responsibility to “feed the flocks.” However, in this text Jehovah charges that the shepherds had rather feed themselves. The shepherds have drunk the milk (1 Cor. 9:7), eaten the flesh and clothed themselves with the wool of the very sheep they were to care for. They selfishly had advanced and enriched themselves at the expense of God’s own. They had indulged and gratified their own appetites while completely ignoring the needs of the sheep. They were so ignorant, lazy, slothful and unfaithful, that God’s sheep were scattered and became as those that had no shepherd. God’s sheep became “the prey of all the beasts of the field” and “they wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill.”

Further, the Lord God charged that the shepherds had not bothered to strengthen the diseased, heal the sick, or bind up that which was broken. They had not “brought again that which was driven away,” or sought that which was lost. But rather he says that they had 11 with force and cruelty” ruled them.

In this dispensation it is the will of God that every flock (local congregation) have its own shepherds (Acts 14:23). In spiritual Israel shepherds (elders) are to feed the church of God (Acts 20:28). Their responsibility is to “all the flock” over which they have been made overseers (Acts 20:28). They are to “feed the flock of God which is among” them (1 Pet. 5:2). And this feeding is to be garnished with unselfishness, willingness to serve the Great Shepherd and a Christlike example in life.

We believe some parallels can be drawn between the failures of shepherds in Ezekiel’s day and the failures of shepherds in many congregations today.

(1) To begin with, over the past 20 years shepherds in many places have selfishly led the sheep to barren pastures and empty wells by allowing the pulpit to become a circus ring rather than a horn of spiritual nourishment. Theology, psychology and institutional ideology replaced the green pastures of speaking as the “oracles of God.” College presidents, editors of papers and silver-tongued promoters became the sources of authority rather than Peter, Paul and John. Hence, countless numbers will cry out eternally in the torments of hell. They will charge indifferent shepherds with allowing the flocks’ very souls to decay and rot as a result of a constant diet of syrupy sermons, honey coated appeals and frosted promotions. Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(2) Meanwhile many shepherds have drunk the milk, eaten the flesh and worn the wool of the sheep. By inviting the promoters for meetings, giving God’s money to the institutions of men and by glorifying the pseudointellectuals in Zion, they enhanced their own stature. Payments were promptly received. Elders who had previously been unheard of and unknown were invited to sit on panels at college lectureships. They were introduced before large audiences at orphan homes and heralded as giants for the cause of Christ in national papers. But why all the attention? The answer is simple: They had put the Herald of Truth, the orphan home and the college in the church budget! Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(3) Meanwhile back at the sheepfold, the flocks began to deteriorate spiritually. In a short time many became diseased with Pentecostalism, sick with Calvinism and broken with Modernism. The unfaithful shepherds were reveling in their new found popularity and brotherhood prominence. They had neither the time, knowledge or inclination to “strengthen,” to “heal” and to bind up.

By this time shepherds had turned the flocks over to professional “hirelings.” They had really lost control and pride prohibited them from reversing their course. One false word and they would have been stamped with that incomparable stigma “Anti!” Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(4) Hence, the die was cast! For most of these unfaithful shepherds there was no turning back. They were enslaved and chained by brotherhood pressure, popular preachers, powerful institutions and their own weakness.

They have not brought back that faithful remnant that was driven away. They have not sought that which is lost. Rather, many shepherds, skillfully manipulated by forces behind the scene, have crudely ruled “with force and with cruelty.” Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(5) Therefore, in many quarters God’s flock is scattered spiritually and doctrinally as sheep without a shepherd. They with anxiety and bewilderment wander through the mountains and high hills of the vicissitudes of life. They have become a prey to the beasts of the field as their starvation diets over the past years have left them weak and unable to discern, much less ward off, the false doctrines of men. Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 522-523
August 19, 1976

By Wallace H. Little

Not long ago, with another Christian, I stood at the bedside of a man dying of cancer in a hospital. He knew he had not long to live, and had accepted the fact of his soon-coming death. He was completely paralyzed and without sensation from the waist down. The loathsome disease had progressed to the point of softening his bones. As careful as the attendants were, and I verified this carefulness by my observation, they had accidentally broken one of his legs a week or so before. He was in considerable pain, and knew he had no chance of recovery, and his only hope for release from his physical agony was death.

But he was disturbed for reasons other than his cancer. A long time prior to this, he had been taught the first principles of the oracles of God. While recognizing truth and its application to him, he put off obedience. It was “not convenient”; besides, he was enjoying things he knew he would have to give up to become a Christian. Now he fully knew he was about to die, and that he was not prepared to do so. This, not his physical condition, was the cause of his mental anguish.

We talked for a few minutes, if the sounds he made could be called “talk.” He wanted to hear again Christ’s call for sinners to come to Him. In ten minutes or so, he urgently requested I baptize him.

It was not easy. His condition was so bad we were convinced to move him from the hospital to the nearest place suitable for immersion would cause him much pain and possibly kill him too. One of the nurses suggested trying a large tub in the hospital. The attending doctor gave his permission, so we carefully shifted him from his bed to a stretcher, and from there to the tub, which by this time was filled with water. Getting him into it was not easy. After baptizing him, getting him back out, onto the stretcher again and then returning him to bed was even more difficult. I know we hurt him, for several times he was unable to keep from groaning.

But now he was no longer troubled in heart. He was completely relaxed and content. Why he waited as long as he did, coming as close to death as he did before being baptized, I do not know. It is doubtful he really knew either. But God in His compassion extended this man mercy: our new brother in Christ lived just short of eight days after being immersed.

I stood in the presence of death . . . then in the presence of life powerful enough to overcome death. Our brother “squeaked through.” But we all stand in the presence of death daily. Oh, not necessarily physical death, but surely separation from God (Isa. 59:1, 2). And unlike this man, most of these will pass through physical death in their present condition, unprepared. The only hope of these lost ones is those of us who know the gospel of Christ and are willing to take it to them.

Without this gospel and ourselves as God’s messengers in bringing it to the lost, we will all continue to stand in the presence of death daily . . . and one day, we will stand in the presence of our own death for having failed to do as God would have us do (Jas. 4:17), not having tried to bring life to the lost, as was brought to our dying brother.

Will you stand in the presence of your own spiritual death?

Truth Magazine XX: 33, p. 522
August 19, 1976