Matthew 16:18
I received a note yesterday from a man who has been confused by the teaching of a self-appointed, free-lance radio preacher, who urges people to quit “attending church,” asserting that “the Church Age is now over and the church is under the judgment of God.” So my confused correspondent asked me, “Is the church under the judgment of God?”
What an absurd thought! How can anyone imagine such a thing? Did not the Son of God assert, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”? It is written of him, “He shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it” (Zechariah 4:7). Of his church, the psalmist sang, “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early” (Psalm 46:5).
To declare that the church is under the judgment of God is to declare that those who make up the church, God’s elect, to whom no condemnation (judgment) can come (Romans 8:1), are under the judgment of God. It is to assert that the redeemed of the Lord, the church he purchased with his own blood (Acts 20:28), are under the judgment of God. It is to insist that the Bride of Christ, loved by him with an everlasting love and espoused by him to himself from eternity, to whom the Son of God wed himself from everlasting, is under the judgment of God. And to teach that the church is under the judgment of God is to teach that the Lord Jesus Christ himself, (who is the Head of his body the church), is under the judgment of God!
No, the church is not under the judgment of God, never has been, and never can be. The church is redeemed, justified and sanctified in and by Christ Jesus. The church is the Family of God. The church is under the blessing of God from everlasting to everlasting!
Babylon is under the judgment of God. Babylon is the false church that is married to Satan, the great whore of freewill, works religion. She wears many names and dresses to suit her hired lovers. She may call herself Buddhist or Baptist, Mohammedan or Methodist, Papist or Protestant; but her doctrine is always the same. She asserts that salvation ultimately depends upon and ultimately is determined by man, not by God. All who dwell in her house and sleep in her bed are “will-worshippers,” not worshippers of Jehovah!
The Lord God speaks plainly to his people about Babylon. — “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). Compare this with Isaiah 48:20, 52:11, Jeremiah 50:8, 51:6, 45 and 2 Corinthians 6:14-71; and you will see that this is God’s command to his people in every age. If we would walk with God, worship and serve him, we must make an absolute, unmistakable, clean break with Babylon. If we would be Christ pure virgin, we must not identify ourselves with the great whore of the world.
Let us utterly abandon every form of false religion, giving no credibility to the will-worship religion of Babylon. But let none who seek the honor of God abandon the assembling of his saints for public worship (Hebrews 10:25).
Since God my Father Reigns — Don Fortner
(Tune: #46 — O for a Thousand Tongues — CM)
1. Who dares dispute Jehovah’s right
To universal sway?
It is our comfort and delight
To know God has His way.
2. Rejoice, my soul, my Father reigns!
Let all creation know
That what His sov’reign will ordains,
No pow’r can overthrow!
3. All worlds obey my Father’s nod,
And His decrees fulfil;
Our strong, eternal, cov’nant God,
Performs His sov’reign will!
4. Forgive, O Lord, my base complaints,
Of ignorance and pride!
I should, since God my Father reigns,
In joyful peace abide!
