have been forgotten), it being a matter of will, love and wisdom that make it
the Word.
When several in the audience pressed him for a clearer distinction between
what is of man and what is of the Lord, he spoke of the need for testimony to
be about the Lord and for it to teach His commandments, but it is done from
the portion of the Holy Spirit which each person receives. He said testimony
should show what the Lord has done for us and can do for others. It should not
set us up as better than others but as better than who we were.
One in the audience cautioned that inviting people to give testimony can
put them in harm’s way because a sense of merit can change a person from
winning in the battle against lust to losing. Another reminded us that the
Lord often told those He healed to tell nobody. Back-and-forth discussion also
touched on whether excluding testimony from a worship service is a matter of
cultural preference or a guard against worshiping from one’s one intelligence
and what is not suitable because not from the Word.
Ron compared the use of testimony with the use of prudence: a prudence
from self leads to hell, but used from the Lord, it is how the Divine providence
leads. As used at The Church of Truth, testimony follows the teaching of the
Word and shows, “This is how I lived this in my life.”
Church Development in Young People
Another paper offered to the council in absentia by one of our most senior
ministers was “Where Are We with Our Young People” by the Rev. Robert
S. Junge. In it, the author traced the story of Israel, as slaves in Egypt, and of
Moses, prepared and raised up by the Lord to work the miracles and plagues
by which Israel was delivered. He shared his reflections on how this story of
the raising up of a nation under God might apply to the gradual process by
which the church is established in each upcoming generation.
He saw parallels between Moses’ slaying of the Egyptian to the way in
which children are introduced to the Word standing up against what is wrong.
Moses’ life in Midian speaks to a state distinct from the world, in which a
simple belief in the Word can prosper, unmolested. When Moses returns
to Egypt to demand Israel’s release, miracles are done by Aaron’s rod which
the Egyptian magicians mimic, but those done by Moses’ rod lead them to
acknowledge that “this is the finger of God.”
So there is a gradual transition from the way the doctrine or teaching of
the church (Aaron’s rod) impresses the young mind, to the acknowledgment of
the true Source of order and happiness that is in the Word.
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