1. Free to Change
2. Freedom and Responsibility
3. My Kind of People
4. "Come Out And Be Separate"
5. Private Intepretation
6. A "Monkey-Wrench" Scripture
7. The Truth That Frees
8. Literary Devices
9. Fear of God
10. A Love Story
11. The Three Trees In Eden
12. Imputed Righteousness
13. Different Essentials For Different People
14. God's Sons In All Ages
15. Looking To Lust
16. Divorce Her!
17. "While Her Husband Is Alive"
18. "They Won't Let Me Preach!"
19. God's Perplexing Prophets
20. Religous Titles
21. Who Sinned?
22. "I'll Join Your Church"
23. The Church As The Route To Heaven
24. One Hundred Years Old
25. Can Our Churches Unite?
26. Can The Cause Of Sickness Be The Cure?
27. When Life Begins
28. Abortion: Law Or Principle?
29. Human Chattel
30. The Hope of Israel
31. The Great Temptation of Jesus
32. The Rich Man And Lazarus
33. My Hermeneutic
34. Is Immersion Proved By Example?
35. Who Gets The Credit?
36. Hook's Points
37. Heresy
38. I Am A Debtor

Other Books at Freedom's Ring

In my radio preaching especially, many times I threw out a challenge such as this: "I will join your church if you will show me from the Bible how to do it. I want to do what the Bible teaches; so, if it tells me how to get into the church of which you are a member, I'll join it!"

Needless to say, I got no offers for such information, and that added to my confidence that the whole truth was in my corner. But how would I have responded had someone offered me the same proposition? Suppose some listener had offered, "I'll join the Central Church of Christ, of which you are a member, if you will take my Bible and read to me from it the instructions as to how to get into it."

How pleased I would have been to give that information. I could have shown that, in the beginning of the church, when people believed, repented, and were baptized for the remission of sins, the Lord saved them, adding them to his one church by the same process. They did not join anything, but the Lord made them constitute the church, his one body which certainly was no sect or denomination. I obeyed the same gospel in the same manner and I let the Lord add me to the same church___the church of Christ. That is the way all of us who are in the Church of Christ got into it and the way that all can get into it. (Notice how smoothely we transform "the church of Christ" into "the Church of Christ!)

"Oh, you mean that you were baptized into the Central Church of Christ?"

"Not really," I explain. "You see, I was baptized into the Rochester Church of Christ in West Texas. When I moved here, I just placed membership in the Central church."

"Then you really cannot show me from the Bible how to get into the Central Church of Christ, can you? Where do I read about it?"

"Well now, everybody knows that, when you move to a new city, you have to place your membership there. You know___."

"I haven't read about placing membership in the Scriptures. Isn't that the same as joining the Central Church of Christ?"

"Certainly not! You can't join the Lord's church!"

"Then, the Central Church of Christ must not be the Lord's church because you joined it. You were baptized into the Rochester Church of Christ. Were you also baptized into the Central Church of Christ?"

"You are being unreasonable!" I protest. "The Church of Christ is universal. When you are baptized into it, you have universal membership, for there is only one church even though it has many different congretations."

"Then you also have membership in the Northside Church of Christ, Southside Church of Christ, Eastside Church of Christ, and Westside Church of Christ in this city?"

"Not really," I explain, "for those churches are all different. The Northside group uses instrumental music in its services. That is sinful, making fellowship with it impossible. Eastside uses only one cup in the communion and thinks that Sunday School is wrong; hence, they have no fellowship with others. The premillennial teachings of Westside keep it from being a true church. The Southside church refuses fellowship with the churches which cooperate to support evangelism, operate children's homes, and other such works. That congregation is not a true, loyal church; so, we cannot recognize it."

"How did those people get into their various churches which are so different as to reject each other? Did they join them? Did they do something different from what you did to get into them? Did they have to do something besides obeying the gospel to get into them?"

"No, they only obeyed the gospel and the Lord added them to those congregations just like he did for me in Rochester more than fifty years ago. The Lord is not pleased with those churches because they have gone beyond the Scriptures. They are in error!"

"The Lord surely knew their nature when he added the saved to them. Do you mean that the Lord adds people to the wrong church sometimes___four out of five times in this city! Does he add people to churches which refuse fellowship with other churches which he also built by adding the saved to?"

"I think that you are just being stubborn and are resisting the plain word of God. There's little profit in discussing with you. Jesus warned us not to cast the pearls to swine!"

The plain truth about the matter is that the Lord does not add us to a congregation of any sort. He adds us to his universal church, and that is not in any organized form; it is just the saved people of earth. We join churches by joining congregations. These churches recognize brotherhood of all groups of similar doctrinal stance. We have invented an absurd expression, "place membership," to avoid saying "join the church." Whether it be done formally or not, when you let a group know that you consider yourself as a part of it or ask to be considered as a part of it, you join it. Due to your misconduct later, you may be withdrawn from. That withdrawal is based on the premise that you were a part of that church.

When a person is baptized into Christ in his or her home community, we consdier that person as having become a member of the church where the baptism took place. No mention is made about application for congregational membership. Generally, we have thought that the Lord adds the new convert to that church. But people are added to all the divisions in the Church of Christ by this same method. They all obey the same gospel, and no application for membership is made; yet, they become members of various dissociating churches by the same process! The night of our sectarian divisiveness is rather foggy, isn't it?

We are misguided when we think that God adds us to congregations. He does no such thing. He adds us to the universal congregation of the saved, but we join local groups. When a group does not recognize other groups of disciples whom the Lord has saved and added, that group is sectarian. As a sect it maintains its own separate identity protected by its own distinct set of doctrines. The Lord does not add the saved to separate, dissociating groups. We join them. We form them. We perpetuate them. But that is not the will of the Lord. To say the least, if the Lord adds his saved to those distinct churches, it is an affront to God for us to reject any group into which he adds the saved.

We are faced with a reality here that we have not dealt with honestly. If God adds us to congregations when he saves us, then he either adds us to (1) congregations that are in fellowship with other congregations, or (2) congregations that reject others. If God adds the saved only to the Central church and others of its kind which he recognizes as his true church, then he breaks his promise in refusing to give salvation to others who obey the same gospel at the Northside, Southside, Eastside, and Westside churches and others of their kinds. If God adds the saved to these five kinds of churches, then he either approves of them or has made a grievous mistake in adding the save to sectarian divisions. If God adds the saved to these five kinds of churches and then those churches reject each other, they have made the grievous mistake of becoming divisive and sectarian.

The Lord adds the saved to his one body, the church, which is not identified as the Church of Christ. All who are saved are in (and constitute) the church of Christ. Many of those who are saved then become members of a group denominated as a Church of Christ. Such a procedure is not directed by the Scriptures. If this Church of Christ dissociates itself from other groups of the saved, it becomes a sect. We have been misguided woefully in thinking that being in the church of Christ is equivalent to being in a Church of Christ. The Lord adds us to his universal church by his choice and action, but we join a Church of Christ by our own choice and action.

My challenge is still extant: "I will join your church if you will show me from the Bible how to do it!"