7/05/2005

“What can be done in the modern church that could help curb the current drop out and go someplace else where its peaceful mentality?”

The answer is simply that the saints do not see what the church is. The Christian life is a matter of seeing. If you see that Jesus is the living savior you will be saved. In the same way, every Christian must also see the church. They must receive a vision of the church. “Without vision the people run wild” (Prov. 29:18)

The church is constituted of the universal God, but it exists on earth in many towns and cities. In nature the church is universal in God, but in practice the church is local in a definite place. Therefore, the church has two aspects, the universal and the local. Without the universal aspect, the church is void of content; without the local aspect, it is impossible for the church to have any expression and practice. Hence, the New Testament stresses the local aspect of the church also. (Recovery Version, footnote 2 of verse 1:2)

The church in each locality is simply the expression of the universal church. Anything in addition to that is not the church. Since there is only one universal church on earth and all born again believers belong to it, there can only be one expression of that one church in every locality and all believers are born into it, whether they meet in it or not. Once the saints see that and the church drops every other affiliation that is not the church and takes the standing that it is the expression of the universal church, the saints will not leave it to go to some place that is not the church.

So it is a matter of the churches standing as the one church in a city and the vision that is imparted thru the ministry that will save the saints from wandering and give them the opportunity to be built up together in the reality of the church. This is confirmed by all the epistles of Paul.


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