“God who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord
of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.”
Acts 17:24
So where does God dwell? If God does not dwell in temples or churches of stone, He must dwell somewhere. Does God need a building to dwell in?
“To them God willed to make known what are the riches
of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles! Which
is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
1 Corinthians 1:27
If I am not mistaken it says that God dwells in you and in me. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit lives in each and every one of us who have truly surrendered to God.[1] Therefore if I am the temple of the Holy Spirit and a part of God does live within me, why do I need the Church to justify me? The scriptures say that to us is given the mystery. So up until that time no one else knew that Christ lived in us. So what do we do with this precious knowledge? Does the modern church preach this knowledge? Unfortunately, many do not! Many are afraid that the Word of God is too dangerous for mere lay people to have without the guidance of the Church. Besides, who would fill all those mega churches? Who would pay for all those television personalities? In addition, of course we have all those private jets and limousines that need to be paid for. This is not how the early Church was created. In the beginning true believers met in their homes and shared what they had among each other. Do not think that I am advocating not attending church, for that would be the other side of the same coin. The Bible teaches us that we should not neglect coming together to worship and pray, but more importantly to exhort and encourage one another.[2] Imagine how different our lives would be as well as the lives of our children if we met like that today. You and your pastor would have a relationship like Christ with His followers. He would know you and your children and could truly minister to you in a very personal way. Remember the
I may claim a relationship with
“But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right
in the sight of God, to listen to you more than to God, you judge’,
For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”
Acts 4:19,20
We are called to simply preach what God has shown us and spoken to us through His Word. Instead there are many preachers who are preaching the world. They take isolated verses of scripture and interpret them to fit their worldly view of things. I have heard preachers read one verse and preach on it for an hour. I realize that the Word of God is profound, but I am not sure that each verse requires such an in-depth dissertation. The Bible much like any other book when taken out of context can be used to rationalize any number of behaviors. Many times this has occurred in our history, you have had men who have used the Bible to justify their desire to enslave their brothers or to say that some humans are more human than others. That is like the proposition that some tigers are more tigery than others, how preposterous would that be? Who would take any biologist seriously that made a claim like that? In my opinion if more of our preachers would stick to preaching the Word of God and not this “easy gospel” many of our sinful epidemics would not be epidemics at all.
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