EVER THOUGHT THAT YOUR CHURCH IS THE ONLY TRUE CHURCH? READ THIS:

EVER THOUGHT THAT YOUR CHURCH IS THE ONLY TRUE CHURCH? READ THIS:

SCENARIO 1:
Around 2001, we were about 5 friends who were like ‘five and six’. We were so close that it was easy to find the others once you’ve seen one. As young believers, our triangle was church, school and fellowship.
At the time, I had this mindset that DeeperLife (my church at the time), teaches the absolute truth, and that most of the other churches were wrong (note that DeeperLife doesn’t teach this; it was just my mindset).
One day, while in church, one of the said friends ran mad right inside our district church. The leaders present at the meeting laid hands on him and prayed for him, but nothing happened. A few weeks after, his mom took him to Celestial Church of Christ (CCC). It was there that he received his healing.
I wasn’t just furious that such a thing could happen to a believer right inside church, I was even more angered by the fact that his healing didn’t happen in my church (the church I held in high esteem) but through ordinary CCC, a church I had little or no respect for.
I almost lost my faith as a result of this, but I didn’t know that God allowed this in order to teach me a lesson about WHAT THE CHURCH is. If you read till the end, you’ll understand.

SCENARIO 2:
In the late 90s, a Mallam came into my neighbourhood (Iwaya, Yaba) and touched a number of random guys, and after a few seconds, their manhood would disappear. Incidentally, one of the victims was a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses. When this happened to him, he didn’t go to his church but to one of the churches his church tells him are not part of “God’s organization”. The said ‘inferior church’ prayed for him and his manhood instantly reappeared. (This is not hear-say. I know the affected guys by name, and I was around the day it happened.)

He probably must have been married right now, and must have had children, all thanks to God through a church tagged ‘apostate’ by the JW organization.
Keep reading. It will all make sense in the end.

SCENARIO 3:
I have a Facebook friend whose version of the gospel goes thus: “You will go to hell if you attend RCCG, Deeper-Life, MFM, Christ Embassy, and any other church other than ‘Church of Christ’. It is the only church prescribed by Jesus.”

After severally seeing this high level of scriptural ignorance and buffoonery, one day, I asked him to provide me with a scripture where Jesus says or implies that believers are to only attend a church incorporated as “Church of Christ”. Up till date, he is yet to find that scripture. I hope he does.

Secondly, Church of Christ, as at today has only 2 million members worldwide, 1.3 million of which are Americans. For a church which prides itself as the ONLY true church, their population looks nothing like “a crowd which no man could number” as prophesied in Rev 7:9 to be the population of the Gentile church that would be saved.

Again, Rev 7:9 says this saved believers are drawn from “all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues”. So, if Americans form over half this population, are you telling me that the rest of the world are left to struggle for a position in the remaining 700,000? Does God love Americans more than the rest of the world? Na wetin we do na?

The above was how the guy’s argument and gospel of hate came crumbling.

When I applied the above argument I put forward to this fellow to my situation (who also once thought that my church was the only true church), I realized that:
1) The church is a collection of people from different and diverse denominations, tongues and tribes who obtained salvation by confessing, accepting and resembling Christ ― and not by associating with a denomination, a building or an organization.
2) NO SINGLE CONGREGATION houses all these elect. While some are from your church, others are from churches you probably do not accept their doctrines.
3) In our diversity as Christians, we complement each other if only we can see things from the standpoint of LOVE. In other words, both those who have an extreme and liberal views about an issue, are brothers who only disagree from different standpoints. None is absolutely right, none is absolutely wrong.
4) To think that any church is THE ONLY ‘SHIP’ sailing believers to Paradise is an error rooted in deep hatred for the rest body of Christ. This teaching and belief is ungodly. Snap out of it!

ARE YOU SAYING EVERY CHURCH TEACHES THE TRUTH?
Definitely not! What I’m saying is that as much as you have the right to quarrel with certain teachings and practices you feel are unscriptural, NEVER EVER cross that line of thinking that you or your organization are the ONLY ones who stand for the truth. For example, eventhough I disagree with the doctrines of Jehovah’s Witnesses, SDA and Catholics, I strongly believe there might be rapturable believers in those congregations. Should I engage them in a dialogue, it won’t be to portray them as inferiors, but to share the undiluted truth of the scripture in love, as known to me (and I’d be open to listening to theirs).

WITH ALL YOU’VE WRITTEN, I STILL BELIEVE MY CHURCH IS THE ONLY TRUE GATHERING OF BELIEVERS
a) Remember when Elijah claimed to be the ONLY remaining prophet in the land? God, in 1 Kings 19:18 corrected him, and informed him that there were still 7,000 uncompromising and faithful believers in the land unknown to Elijah.
b) You will agree with me that the Children of Israel were God’s only people as at the time they were journeying from Egypt to Canaan. Do you know that God’s Spirit was on a foreigner named Balaam? Read Number 22 – 24. If I’m not mistaken, it was this Balaam that first prophesied about the coming of Christ (Numbers 24:17). A foreigner but has the spirit of God in him (in other words a believer).

Finally, let me leave you with this scripture to think on:
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-31)

God bless you as you yield to the truth.