I want to make myself clear on this point, here, because I'm tired of certain things being said in the church. I have no problem with the preaching of outward holiness. I believe outward Holiness is as important as inward, that the two go hand in hand and that if one claims to be saved one must be separate from the world. I understand THIS POINT. However, I want to make something clear, what I do have a problem with is when we turn our own traditions into holiness matters.
I DO have a problem with one church not fellow-shipping with another church simply because the pastor has facial hair and the women wear/don't wear veils. I DO have a problem with television, men wearing shorts, playing football, and women dying their hair becoming a "holiness" issue. I also respect every pastor's right to establish standards in their churches, and will respect those standards, however unless it IS a Heaven or Hell issue, it shouldn't even be a source of argument and Pentecostals have to realize that television is not going to send people to Hell, THE TELEVISION SHOWS people watch aren't going to send people to Hell.
Sin sends people to Hell.
If you are sinning, you are going to Hell. You are not going to Hell for watching the news on television, wearing shorts in 90 degree weather at an amusement park, or playing college basketball. I think we've gotten so wrapped up in our traditions we've forgotten that the Bible doesn't say anything about half of what we spend time barking about, while people are dying in their sins. It gets to the point where our churches are trying to prove which church has the members which are the "most separate" from the world. By abstaining from SIN we are already separate from the world. Yes there are some things that are Biblically sound and universal to the church. However, there's so much added to the church now that we've forgotten that there's actually a Bible we can read, that will tell us what the Apostles preached. The Apostles preached Jesus. The Apostles did set the church straight on many doctrinal issues, but many things were left up to the Pastors and to the individual in deciding what to do regarding certain societal issues.
If Paul came back today we'd have to sit him down and catch him up on the vast technological, social, and economic changes that have occurred since the first century. And yeah... I hear you "Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever." Here's the thing I want to know on what grounds and authority the UPC has to speak on Christ's behalf against television? There was none in Paul's day, but there is now. There were no cars. There were no laptops, and iphones, and ipads. I believe that if Paul saw this generation he'd think the church as a whole was a joke. He'd hit every street he could, get on every television station that'd let him on, learn everything he possibly could about every single culture he could experience and preach what he preached in his day: HE PREACHED JESUS. And he'd preach it from the WORD OF GOD not from printed tracts.
How do I come to this conclusion? When Paul got saved he went into the desert in Arabia for years learning about nothing but Christ. Read
1 Corinthians 9:20-21 when he talks about becoming like a Jew to reach the Jews and like the gentiles to reach the gentiles. He studied society, he studied cultures, he observed and then he reached those cultures one by one. His mission was to reach out to the lost and establish churches. In this society I think Paul would put 90% of modern Apostolic churches to shame when it comes to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. Because he wouldn't be so focused on stuff that does nothing for the gospel like TV, he'd be interested in saving souls.
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