Truth Magazine

By Morris Hafley

In the Ohio Valley there is a deadly virus. It has killed thousands already and more have been diagnosed with the virus. Small children and adults are dying horrible, lingering painful deaths. You may not have heard about it until this moment. The government is trying to keep it a secret. That’s the reason you have not heard about it.

There is a doctor in the Valley that has the cure. He is the only one, but for some unknown reason he is not sharing the vaccine with any one. I suppose he is waiting for the highest bidder and/or he is the meanest, most heartless doctor of all time. Perhaps he wants to remain friends with “the higher ups.” Government officials know this culprit and are saying that “he is an old man and has done much good in the field of medical research for many years.”

People (those who have heard) are moving from the Valley and getting as far away as quickly as possible. It is a mass exodus such as I have never seen. They are running as fast as they can lest they contact this deadly virus, leaving behind all they have ever known, and selling their land for little or nothing just to escape. They have no concern for their jobs or their possessions. They are only concerned for their lives.

The government is warning all not to tell others, but as you can see I am not listening. I want you to know as quickly as possible. I would want you to tell me if the situation were reversed. The government says it will create a panic and the economy will be destroyed if the rest of the country knows about this.

Though the above is not true I am reminded of a virus that indeed has infected us all, the virus of sin (Rom.

3:23). It is a virus that kills (Rom. 6:33). I also know of a Physician who has the cure and is not hoarding it for the highest bidder (Mark 2:16-17; 16:15).

Do we want to hear of “outbreaks” of sin? Certainly not! After all it separates us from the one who loves us most (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; Isa. 59:1-2). If it is a deadly disease it does not matter with whom it starts. We want to know ASAP! Why would we want to protect someone who could lead us to torment with a deadly doctrine (Matt. 15:13-14)? It, too, is a slow, lingering, painful death (Luke 16:19-31; Matt. 8:12; Rev. 20:14).

I want to go on record right now by saying if I teach a doctrine that is contrary to the Word expose me if I refuse to repent. Tell all who I am and what I am teaching just as God did in 1 Timothy 1:20 — “Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” Warn all that my “word will eat as cloth a canker” and that I have “erred concerning the truth” (2 Tim. 2:17-18).

Refusing to repent I may in all honesty, as sweet as a little lamb, cry, “I’ve been misrepresented.” Do not let that deter you from exposing me (John 3:20-21). Some think that before one may be labeled as a false teacher, he must have horns and fangs and be rude, crude and tattooed with a devil insignia.

Do not allow how long I have been preaching to stop you. Do not allow our longtime friendship to sway you. Do not allow my friends and what they may say or write about you to scare you. Paul, in all honesty, went about making “havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison” (Acts 8:3; 23:1). His sincerity did not make him right.

The Lord stopped him (Acts 9). Please! “SOMEBODY STOP ME” before the judgment!

Stop the virus of sin. Do not wait until it has a good head of steam before you try to stop it. It could steamroll right over you and any in its path. “But there were false proph- ets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber” (2 Pet. 2:1-3, NASV).

By Connie W. Adams

It is common these days to blame every sin, whether murder, theft, adultery, addiction, or whatever, on somebody or something other than the perpetrator of the offense. The offender was abused as a child, either by parents or others. Or, maybe society as a whole failed the felon. Maybe it was the influence of wild-eyed, radical, right-wing, religious extremists that caused the accused to go into a fast-food restaurant and shoot down fifteen people, or a student to shoot ten of his fellow-students in a prayer circle before the school day began. It was not long after the tragedy at Paducah, Kentucky before the press was speculating that the student arrested for killing three of his fellow-students and wounding seven more, was small for his age and had been picked on by others.

I suppose it is natural to try to figure out why people commit criminal and other sinful acts. But the notion that such behavior may be shifted away from the guilty to others, whatever they may have done, or not done, is faulty. It stands opposed to common sense and certainly to the teaching of Scripture.

Ezekiel 18 is instructive on this matter. The scene here is one of captivity. Ezekiel prophesied to those who had already entered Babylonian captivity. In the first four verses, Ezekiel brought up a common proverb among the people which was being pressed into service to explain why they had gone into this dreadful captivity. They said, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (v. 2). In verse 3 he said, “You shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.” Why was that? “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (v. 4). The Lord was teaching them not to blame their troubles on their fathers. It is true that parents have influence on their children and they will have to answer for how they use it. But if a child eats sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge because he ate sour grapes, not because of what his father did or did not do.

Good Fathers and Bad Sons

Ezekiel proceeds to describe a man who is “just” and who does what is “lawful and right” but who has a son who becomes a robber, a murderer, an idolater, and who does “abominations.” Who is to blame? Look at it: “He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him” (vv. 5-12). Is a just father to blame for his son becoming a renegade? Absolutely not! He ate his own sour grapes.

Bad Fathers and Good Sons

Then Ezekiel paints a different picture. This time he presents a man who is a rascal but who bears a son who turns away from the evil ways of his father (vv. 14-18). In verse 17 he plainly said, “he shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live.” Then in verse 20 he said “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” Each person bears responsibility for his own actions regardless of what others have done.

Modern Concepts and Sin

Many today are uncomfortable with the idea of sin. Sin has been softened and minimized. And if there is no sin, there is no sinner. But somebody or something is to blame. So, the search for the scapegoat begins. The wayward son in Luke 15 “came to himself” after he had spent his money and time in wild living. Reduced to dire circumstances, he resolved to go back home. When he got there he said to his father, “I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:21). Isn’t it interesting that he did not blame the government, the synagogue school, the community recreation project nor even his father. He did not say, “Well, if you had not been such an authoritarian father, so unfeeling and unreasonable, I never would have been tempted to leave home in the first place.” I can guarantee you that is exactly what some of the social engineers of today would have said. He took his inheritance. He wasted it. He was profligate.

The common defense of the mass murderer is insanity. Are there mentally unbalanced people? To be sure. Are there terrible things sometimes done by those who are not rational. Without doubt. But every criminal act is not to be explained on that basis. There is such a thing as sin and those who commit them are sinners. There are those who have the rationality to plot, scheme, build elaborate devices to carry out their intents. They are not crazy. They are sinful. They had choices to make and made the wrong ones.

The Principle of Personal Accountability

Both the strong brother and the weak one in Romans 14 are held accountable for their behavior toward the other. “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12). Should we place a stumblingblock in another’s way? No. The one doing so will have to answer for it. But it must also be said that each one of us is responsible for walking “circumspectly.” We must all watch where we are going. It is like the man who gets a speeding ticket and defends himself on the ground that this driver in front of him was just poking along and finally in frustration he sped around him and exceeded the limit. The issue is “Who was driving your car?” The pokey driver or you? You may have been tempted by the circumstances, but who yielded to the temptation?

I have endured a lifetime of teasing because of my first name. So has my wife over hers. But you know, neither of us ever decided to go to school with guns and shoot down fellow-students because of it. What others may do may very well annoy us, frustrate us, but whatever we say or do is still a matter of personal choice and responsibility.

It is high time that people in this land stopped blaming everyone but themselves for their actions. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).

By Mike Willis

In the September-October 1997 issue of Wineskins an article was published entitled “I Just Want To Testify” by Dan Dozier. The magazine Wineskins is published by those supportive of Rubel Shelly, Max Lu- cado, and the Nashville Jubilee, if that helps you to identify its doctrinal stance. This article by Dozier tells us about the practice of “testifying” in worship assemblies.

The word “testify” is a Bible term. The word is translated from the various cognates of ma/rtus: ma/rtur, marture/w, marturi/a, martu/rion, martu/romai. The basic meaning of the word group is conveyed by ma/ rtus: “a witness (one who avers, or can aver, what he himself has seen or heard or knows by any other means)” (Thayer 392). The word is used throughout the New Testament to relate what the witnesses of Christ saw and heard from him. They could testify about his miracles, his words, his death, his resurrection because they had seen and heard the things that transpired. The words of the New Testament are the testimonies of eyewitnesses and the inspired words of men who recorded what they had seen and heard or had personally investigated.

However, the modern practice of testifying is something quite different. Men who lived nearly two thousand years after Christ are not qualified to give testimony about anything Christ did. They have never seen him nor heard him speak. Can you imagine a lawyer calling someone to give testimony about whether or not a man committed a crime, but the “witness” was on another continent and was not even born when the crime occurred? Such a lawyer would be laughed out of court.

Yet, the modern practice in many churches has “witnesses” “testifying” in churches about “what Christ has done for me.” These witnesses cannot testify about seeing Christ, for they have never seen him. They have never heard him speak one word. They have never touched him. Hence, all that they can testify about is their own subjective experience, whatever its nature may be.

Our brother became convinced that such testimony services were good in the church he attends, not because he found book, chapter, and verse to teach that it was good, but because of an experience his local church had. He tells how six teenagers and two adults related their experiences on a mission in poverty stricken regions of Mexico and Nassau. As they related their touching experiences of washing a child, feeding the hungry, and clothing those who were ill-clad, our brother said he changed his mind about testimonies in worship. Scripture did not change his mind, but experience did.

As a matter of fact, our brother belittles those who want to find Scripture for such testimony services before they practice them. He wrote,

Most Churches of Christ have not practiced personal testi- monies. One reason has to do with the view held by many that the New Testament is a blueprint for every practice in worship. This view holds that there is a clear pattern of worship in the New Testament, and it is to be replicated exactly in every age. It doesn’t seem to matter that the New Testament does not give a standard order of what worship was to be for any church. The reasoning goes like this: If a worship practice was present in the primitive church, that act of worship merits repetition today. If the New Testament is silent on certain activities, they had best be left out of our worship today. If you follow the reasoning, the conclusion is that we should not do “testimonies” because we have no specific, unquestionable illustrations of such being done in an assembly of worship in the New Testament.

At least this view takes Scripture very seriously, and that should be applauded. However, to use the New Testament as a detailed description of worship that outlines every form and sequence of the service is a mistake. . . . How one congregation orders its worship making use of those various elements, is up to each congregation. That is why Christian worship services look different in different cultures, and yet each one may be thoroughly acceptable and honoring to God (Wineskins 3:5, 31).

Obviously, this person has rejected the “blueprint” of the New Testament as the answer to whether or not one should have testimonies in worship. Having rejected the Bible as a “blueprint,” what use is there to quote the Bible to such a person? If one found a direct statement that said, “Thou shalt not have testimonials in worship,” he could set that aside as a legalistic interpretation of the Bible, binding cultural items of worship on people of another culture, or just reply, “I know that is what the apostle thought, but I do not agree with him.”

If there is no fixed pattern for worship, there can be no unscriptural worship. Paul said, “. . . for where no law is, there is no transgression” (Rom. 4:15). Consequently, any kind of worship is just as scriptural as any other. The group that brings in a rock “Christian” band, does not partake of the Lord’s supper (or partakes of it using light bread and water), who prays in Mary’s name, who teaches tithing, and preaches from the Book of Mormon is just as scriptural as the church in Jerusalem that “continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42), according to this logic. Without a divinely revealed pattern, there is no unscriptural worship.

What Is Wrong With Testifying?

The thing that is wrong with testifying is that it makes faith rest on uninspired words rather than inspired words. Brother Dozier shows that is true from his own article. He related an incident in which his daughter Amy had “testified” to a Japanese friend and concluded, “Yasuyo was interested in the teaching about God, but what touched her heart most were the personal testimonies my daughter and others shared with her. . . .The message of Christ is of primary importance, but it very well may be Amy’s personal testimony that someday helps lead Yasuyo to Jesus Christ.” Note that Amy’s personal testimony would carry more weight than the divinely revealed message of first century eyewitnesses!

Our faith does not rest on the fallible testimony of people such as Amy, but it rests upon the divinely revealed word of God. Paul wrote, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). The personal testimony of Amy or anyone else cannot produce saving faith! Our faith rests on the miracles that Jesus performed in the presence of eyewitnesses. John wrote, “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:30-31).

The Muslim who visits poverty stricken regions of Mexico and Nassau can produce the same kind of testimony as the children in his local church. Does their washing a filthy baby, clothing the ill-clad, and feeding the hungry prove that Muhammad is a prophet? If not, how can our children doing the same prove that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? A person giving his personal, subjective testimony about some religious “encounter” proves absolutely nothing about Jesus!

This issue focuses attention on the heart of what is wrong with some preaching among us. Gifted speakers are able to relate some emotionally moving human interest story that will move one to tears, relate another story that causes one to break out in laughter, and wrap up his “sermon” with a third story that makes one feel warm inside. However, such stories do not and cannot built faith. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. Churches that are fed a steady diet of preaching that has little or no Bible content are filled with men who, at the very best, have a weak faith!

Conclusion

We do not need to change our public assemblies to have “testifying.” We already have all the testimony we need to create and build faith — that is the inspired words of the first century witnesses. What can the words of a person born 2000 years later prove about what occurred in the first century? Rather, let us preach the testimony of the witnesses. One who will not hear the witnesses of the Bible is not of Christ. John wrote, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6).

By P.J. Casebolt

“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). By a special act of creation, God created woman, mothers, and motherhood. I would like to wield the pen and strike a blow for motherhood at least one more time before the term becomes completely meaningless, or even extinct. Mothers are already an endangered species in our modern society, and if some continue to have their way with respect to abortion and the deterioration of family values, the extinction of motherhood may become more fact than fable.

All are agreed that many of our social and moral problems are a direct result of deterioration in the home. Yet, not enough are willing to do anything about the problem. According to the latest statistics, well over half of all mothers work outside the home. And, the time and emphasis spent on being a mother suffers accordingly. Again, if some feminists and like-minded “liberators” of womanhood and motherhood have their way, all mothers will be out of the home and the children left over from the effects of abortion will all be turned over to surrogate day-care centers which will be partially or completely supported by taxes. Even those of us who are trying to salvage the institution of motherhood will be forced to support those practices which are destroying the very thing we are striving to save.

As in most matters, there are exceptions to the general rule. We recognize situations which are affected by widowhood, shiftless fathers and husbands, childless couples, or even homes where the children are grown and gone. But the exception is supposed to prove the rule, not become the rule.

A lot of emphasis is being made on the matter of “pro-choice” and a woman’s right to fulfill her own ambitions. Should not at least equal rights be accorded those women who choose to remain in the home and make motherhood their number one priority in life? These latter are fast becoming the minority, and are beginning to be regarded as second-class women. I believe that we should take the time in our speech, and space in our writing, to commend every woman who wants to devote all of her time to being a woman, a wife, and a mother.

The Bible is filled with examples of “mothers of Israel” who emulate and exonerate the institution of motherhood. One mother’s love for her child was so strong that she was willing to let an impostor have her child rather than see the child put to death (1 Kings 3:26, 27). But, another mother encouraged her daughter to dance before a king and to have John the Baptist’s head cut off (Matt. 14:3-11). We have all seen children creating havoc in stores, church buildings, and other public places while their mothers were either nowhere to be seen or were totally oblivious to the actions or safety of their own offspring. News headlines and police blotters are filled with accounts of child neglect, and even abuse and murder. But I noticed something last summer that reaffirmed my faith in mothers and motherhood.

Several mothers were together while their offspring played nearby. It was difficult to tell which offspring be- longed to which mother, but all of the mothers seemed to be keeping an eye out for the little ones. If a problem seemed to be developing, one of the mothers would go check it out. If some bully began to mistreat his or her playmates, a mother would discipline the rebel. On one occasion, the father intervened in a squabble, and sent one of the big bullies sailing with its tail tucked between its legs. I mean, literally. You see, I live in the country, and a herd of cows and calves graze, feed, sleep, and play in the field by our house. And as J.D. Tant used to say, “Before God,” these cows acted more like mothers than do some mothers of the human race. I noticed that some mothers saw to it that their calves were fed and cared for even before the mother’s own personal ambitions were satisfied. My heart took hope. If all else fails, maybe we can turn to the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air for some basic lessons in mother- hood. Once we learn the basics, we can begin reading our Bibles instead of reading after psychologists intoxicated with human wisdom, and listen to the Lord instead of some self-styled liberator who only wants to bring the women and children of our country into bondage of the flesh.

I wrote the following poem in 1988 when I was in a meeting at Monticello, Florida. The sister in whose home we were staying received a telephone message one day that her mother had died. I noticed tears in her eyes when she hung up the phone. I can’t stop tears for mothers, but maybe I can help fellow pilgrims see through them more clearly.

A Tear for Mother

There are, it seems, so many kinds of tears

Those born of pain, of sadness, and tears of joy as well;

Some kind will follow us all through our years

But we’ll grow wiser since that first, lone teardrop fell.

 

We have a different feeling in our heart

For father, sister, brother, children, loved ones all;

It’s there when first we meet and when we part,

Renewed by mem’ries, songs, by pictures on the wall.

 

For mothers, too, we have a special love

Because the love they give is special, diff’rent still;

It’s gentle like the call of mourning dove,

And melancholy like the woodland whip-poor-will.

 

So, mothers, be a mother while you may,

For no one else can fill your place, Be so dear;

And when it comes your time to go away,

Somewhere there’ll drop for you a special tear.