Monday, June 10th, 2024.
It has been twenty years since a few convicted saints established Grace Ambassadors Bible Fellowship in Indiana. Twenty years is a drop in the bucket compared to what I saw this past week in our traveling meetings to New England.
In that area of the country there are churches and towns established in the 1700s!
Many of those churches have since departed from Biblical Christianity. Yet, at that time in history they carried the Bible and their convictions with them across an ocean to start new churches and communities around what they saw as the truth. It was not easy.
Early settlers to America were fleeing hegemonic state churches they considered to be in doctrinal error. They wanted to put in practice what they saw the Bible preaching. Their pursuit to practice the truth led them to the loss of all other things in exchange for something new.
That was not the first time in history Christians left what had been established to do what their conscience and Scripture told them was right. Do you remember the Christians in the catacombs, the mountains, or during the Reformation?
If you ever feel that you are surrounded by churches that teach wrong doctrine, you are not the only one. There are others.
I met quite a few this past week during our traveling meetings to New England. There have been many others throughout history. It is practically a Christian tradition.
If you think the Bible puts you at odds with established Churchianity that has lost its way, then learn a lesson from history. Be bold enough to leave the error and persistent enough to see something new established.
With the courage of our convictions to come out from established error and build something right, then in two or three centuries (if the Lord tarries) perhaps churches built on the Pauline foundation will have succeeded in defining a small piece of history.
Early American settlers risked their lives traveling thousands of miles to establish their belief. We are to pray for such boldness. It is also the Pauline pattern as an ambassador of God’s grace (Eph 6:19-20).
For the salvation of future souls,
Justin “doctrinal settler” Johnson