AM I ALONE

Recently there have been some questions that have laid heavy on my heart and I am wondering if I am alone.

Is every one satisfied with the new or lecturing way some have “preached” the Word of God in our C.R.C.? Do some go home as I, pondering where the blessing and spirit filled hearts are, trying to put the pieces together so I can feed on the Word during the week?

Am I alone or are there others who have found that Sunday school and catechism come last and everything else comes first? Have we so lost the appreciation of Sunday school and catechism that it has spread into the homes where parents have also lost a sense of the importance of them?

YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN

I wonder if the Lord ever gave all those of us, who are Church members, a more important warning than that we must be born again to enter heaven (Jn. 3:3). The more because of directing it to as active a Church member as ever there was perhaps, namely Nicodemus. Yes and even repeated the introductory word—“verily” or “truly.”

Yet of all the sermons that I personally have listened to over the years I cannot recall even one that was based on that warning. Is that because of so many believing in baptismal regeneration? Is all the controversy in our circles, these late years, due to so many not having been reborn? And is that the reason why so many no longer take God‘s Word to be authoritative when, for example, it comes to women in ecclesiastical office?

Something to be mindful of, I realize, is the possibility of having been regenerated in infancy or unconsciously. That possibility, not one of us, presume, would deny, for that would be the same as to declare that all the children of believing parents who have died in infancy have perished.

But let us not dare to take for granted that actually we were born again in infancy, seeing this warning of our Lord makes it clear that our everlasting weal or woe is at stake. Scripture, for good reasons, warns us that we examine ourselves whether we be in the faith, and that we make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10).

J .E. Brink Kalamazoo, MI