Introduction

[wayofthespirit]

Greetings to all at CBCF.

I guess my lengthy testimonony is as good an intruction as any so here goes:

I came to faith as a child over 60 years ago in a little chapel opposite my parent’s home.
(They packed me off to the chapel’s Sunday school in order to get themselves a peaceful Sunday afternoon.)
By the time I was 16, and in my first job, my faith and the chapel totally absorbed my life.
We believed (at least I thought that we did) in total independence without denominational affiliation, and in God’s development of each member to serve his purpose from cleaner and coffee maker, right up to and including the Pastorate.
Based on Christ’s Sermon on the mount we also majored on practicing complete deference to each other and to all Christians (turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, if asked for our coat then give our cloak, honour the lesser vessels amongst us, total love and forbearance to one another, etc.)
However my faith was eventually shattered when the Elderly Pastor and his two assistants abandoned all that they had taught me and led the chapel into bitter warfare over the question of Pastoral succession.
What they had been preaching, and I had been believing, should have precluded such a complete reversal but far from it with the entire membership taking sides with one or another of the three leaders.
The bitterness became so great that the leadership split up, defected to other Churches and took their supporters with them.
At the time I was living and working in another area and when I eventually returned the assembly was so unrecognisable that I took my shattered illusions off into the ‘wilderness’ to pray and seek resolution.
Thus began, for me, many years of complete prayerful re-appraisal, including extensive research into the History of Christianity from the first teachings of Christ, through all the deliberations and declarations of the numerous Ecumenical Councils, and all the claims and counter claims of the subsequent ‘Reformation’ with all their various creeds and Articles of Faith.
Consequently I have had no denominational influence for over 40 years now and I make it my practice to attend whichever is the nearest church to wherever God places me from time to time (provided of course that they will accept me into full fellowship without demanding formal acquiescence into any man made criteria beyond that which makes me a member of the Body of Christ)
I guess re-appraisal remains an ongoing process, and out of the chequered 2000 year history of Christianity, who would expect the emergence of yet another denominational ‘Parrot’.
Sorry folks but I am now ‘what I am’ and I can only trust and pray that I have kept myself sufficiently free from prejudice, and continually seeking the hidden treasure of Heaven’s Kingdom with sufficient diligence to at least be somewhere close to where God wants me to be.

Mike.
__________________

 

[Miss Hepburn]

Hi Mike welcome here - I hope you have fun.

Miss Hepburn

 

[gumby]

Hi mike welcome to the site

 

[HammerStone]

Mike, first and foremost, welcome to Christianity Board!

I can sympathize with your thoughts on the denominational part of things. It's a struggle here at CB each and every day to keep this place free of them. It seems like regardless of affiliation, you get those folks who ultimately want to argue that "my denomination is better than your denomination" and so on and so forth. We know from Scripture that the Word would be divisive and that chances are we're going to disagree with our fellow believers on something. I've always thought that if you took any church and asked a good bit of questions about beliefs placing each person with different beliefs in a different room, you'd have a whole lot of rooms with one person in them. I don't see a problem with that when it's handled maturely because we're human.

However, if folks would just devote the time they take broadcasting their denomination and instead devote it to study and helping the lost, so much more could be done!

Perhaps with your study of the history of the church, you can help us out. It's admittedly an area I've never studied much. What few names I have returned to and read...well...it's funny how many of them don't sound like the denominations and doctrines that are passed off in their names these days.

This forum is open to any member of the Body of Christ, so we're glad to have you with us!

 

[wayofthespirit]

Wonderful words Mr Hammerstone.

Permit me to expand on my personal Statement of faith as follows:

If Christ’s real Church (as distinct from State adopted versions and through to denominations originated by deluded individuals) is built on Peter’s confession that “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God”, and if the gates of Hades cannot prevail against it, then throughout the ages it must surely always have been extant in the form of at least a slender thread.

And that would be as equally applicable to today’s saturation of “We’ve got it rights” as it was to the dark ages of authoritarian oppression of the 4[sup]th[/sup]-15[sup]th[/sup] centuries.

I’m certainly not an “I’ve got it right” person but I sure incline to the view that “Many have got it wrong”.

I incline to the view that whereas God’s principal means of communicating with man under the Old Covenant was by words written on Tablets of Stone or in Ink on Papyrus, his principal means of communicating with believers since Pentecost is to use such words, together with others, as media by which His Holy Spirit could communicate into the fleshy tables of his heart such as each believer personally needed to know.

Christ became in the flesh to exemplify God to man, even to the extent of perfect love in offering up his life of his own volition as propitiation for sin, without committing a single word to writing.

The appointed Apostles however were taught things pertaining to the Kingdom of Heaven by Christ in order for them to ‘kick start’ the launch of “The faith once delivered to the saints” and the “traditions of the Church” by word of mouth and by epistles.

At least a selection of those epistles have been copied and translated and are used by God’s Holy Spirit to convey truth to the individual believer which is relevant to his personal needs.

Absolute truth however is sparingly conveyed and even so can only be partially seen as through a glass darkly.....it is never conveyed to anyone with sufficient certainty of interpretation for it to be used for the purpose of underpinning a denominationally divisive dogma.”

Mike.

 

[HammerStone]

Brother Mike, that remnant has always been around. It might not always be written about nor can we cannot always call it by a specific name (other than Christian), but it's there. I personally feel it spans across many denominations and might not necessarily be the person beside you in the pew. It is our concern to make sure that we are in the right mind and place, and witnessing to others and helping them is a part of this. There's too much judgment and too much "I know more" or "I am better than you" out there.

I Peter 5:6
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,

I admittedly don't always stick with the humility part, but it's amazing to see it work.

What you have said is appropriate and true, so I hope you'll make the journey beyond this thread.