 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
When God speaks, of what value is religion that disobeys what He says? Will religion save us from the wrath of the omniscient God who knows our hearts and knows that disobedience comes from our willfulness in the pursuit of our agenda over His?
We have been considering the requirements of God upon church leadership. (179) In this Laodicean age (and if you don't know what that means, you ought to ask yourself why you don't because everyone who knows their Bible, like God requires us to know it, is aware of the church of Laodicea, the rest probably belong to the church of Laodicea--check it out, it's in Revelation 3:14-22) we find ourselves in a cultural milieu that militantly resists the words of the omniscient God Who desires to save all men. Even in the churches of those who believe themselves to be the most committed to the will of God, we find an enormous breakdown in obedience to His requirements for leadership.
As we have shown in other articles, (179) (180) God has not stuttered in His description of those to whom the church will be entrusted. In Paul's inspired letters to Timothy and Titus, the characteristics of church leaders are set forth in multiple ways.
The first characteristic listed (in 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6) is that the man be blameless. What that means is then described with an extended list of virtues that follow. In other words, he must be blameless in the following areas. The first following area is that he be the husband of one wife. This means, obviously, that he is to be married. And, just as obviously, it means that he is to be married to one woman. That's not hard for normal Americans to understand. However, put yourself in the midst of the Mormon church, which teaches the absolute necessity of a woman having a husband in order to be called forth in the resurrection--and the attendant dogma that men should marry several wives in order to give them the hope of eternal life!!, and suddenly it is not so clear that the leaders of God's church are to be one-woman men. Or, put yourself in one of the several cultures in our world where polygamy is accepted cultural practice, and suddenly you are no longer willing to accept the word of God because of your culture.
Is it so hard, then, to understand why the American church also has its cultural problems with the Word of God? Tradition has it that we should be on one of two extremes: either our leaders ought not to be married at all (a doctrine of devils--see 1 Timothy 4:1-3); or we ought to let men be leaders who are multiple-women men. It is a source of constant amazement to one who knows the Bible that the so-called churches that are supposed to be founded upon biblical truth are so tolerant of failed leadership that people actually still want a man in the pulpit after having been arrested for hiring a prostitute (for what? evangelism?), or after divorcing his wife to marry some other man's divorced wife. Our culture is either too rigid in its self-promotion (the unmarried are more spiritual), or is too lax in its so-called loving tolerance (God is the most loving Being in the universe and He adamantly forbids such). Where are you in this cultural rebellion against the Word of God? Taking part?