What Scripture Says To Abandon Our God-Given Calling Where We Live & Uproot Ourselves To WBC?

 

The Bible is clear: if in fact you have a calling to follow the Savior wherever He goes, you get on with it.

The Bible is clear: if in fact you have a calling to follow the Savior wherever He goes, you get on with it.

The below is a transcript of WBC’s latest video production, which you can watch here: http://signmovies.com/?tab=news&vid=20141227Uproot

Welcome friends, to another edition of WBC Video News, where in this edition we will answer a question put to us recently in response to what I’ll call the “butts in the pews” view of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The question goes like this:

“What scripture instructs us to abandon our God-given calling where we live and uproot ourselves according to our own or your own desire for closer fellowship?”

It’s not an entirely unreasonable question, and deserves a response, since if one of you out there who claims to believe as this church body does has it in their mind, it is likely others do, too.  We’ve answered this question in various ways before, but that’s okay, we’ll answer it again, because if it helps one of God’s sheep to clearly see their duty, the labor is well worth the time and effort.

To answer this question, we must first lay out two premises that we must say are agreed upon as fact:

Premise 1:  The Westboro Baptist Church is in fact and in deed a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  If you don’t have that view, there is no point in asking the question in the first place, since there is no truth or hope in this body and no need to be present with it.

Premise 2:  By all objective evidence in front of us today, WBC is the ONLY church of the Lord Jesus Christ in existence on the earth.  If you find fault with that premise, then there are more fundamental questions you should be asking.

Based upon these two premises, I submit to you the following scriptural arguments as to why it is necessary and altogether good to uproot yourself so that you might fully follow Christ.

Argument 1:  Christ commands it.

To follow Him, you must know where He is, otherwise you’re just wandering, as Cain did after he slew Abel.  Where is Christ, then that He may be followed?  Where Christ’s church is, there He is.  “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20).  Where Christ is worshipped in truth, He meets with those people, even if it is a small group.  Remember the two premises from which we launched into this discourse.  There is only one known church of Christ in the world today.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt 16:24).  Following is not a mental exercise.  Christ isn’t telling you to watch His tweets and retweet Him, or post a like to His Facebook wall.  He’s telling you to get up off your ass and go where He goes, do what He does, and physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally follow Him.  If you aren’t where He is, you aren’t following Him, even if you stand on a street corner with some signs that look like ours or bear similar or even identical messages.  Even if you read the Bible every night and argue with people online about fag marriage.  That’s not following Him.

As a practical matter, Christ proves this argument multiple times in scripture:

“And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19) – in other words, Peter and Andrew, put down the nets which you use to make your daily living and feed your families, and follow me on this journey.  Now.  As in immediately.  As in why is the net still in your hand.  As in put that fish down and put your right foot in front of the left, the left foot in front of the right, and repeat the process, going where I go.

“And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me.  And he arose, and followed him” (Matt 9:9).  Matthew dropped everything, left the receipt book and walked away from everything he had – employment, housing, family, everything – to follow Christ and His way.

“But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead” (Matt 8:22).  Leave the rotting corpse to rot and uproot yourself from your grief and hit the road with me to minister.

“Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing:  sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven:  and come, follow me” (Luke 18:22).  Remember, this was a man who contended with Jesus that he kept all the commandments and was serving God faithfully.  It is likely that He was, since Jesus didn’t dispute his claim and call him out as a liar, so the clear implication here is that it doesn’t matter what you think you are doing, if you aren’t actively FOLLOWING HIM, right on His heels, all your self-righteous God-given calling doesn’t amount to a hill of beans!

In this context, that means getting your butt in the pew of the place where He has chosen to put His name, whether that’s WBC, or some other church where the truth is plainly spoken and a body of believers is present.

Argument 2:  It is for the good of the body.

“But to do good and communicate forget not:  for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Heb 13:16).  That word communicate doesn’t mean you can text or Skype once or twice a month and call it a God-pleasing sacrifice.  The word is the Greek koy-nohn-ee-ah which according to Strong’s means “partnership, that is, literally participation, or social intercourse”.  You have to be present with the body to participate with the body.

That communication and participation is key and critical to the spiritual growth and well-being of Christ’s church!  “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7).  That fellowship is the same Greek word koy-nohn-ee-ah.  To walk in the light requires active partnership, participation and social intercourse with the rest of the body!

How else can you actively participate in the bearing of one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2) if you will not uproot yourself from your current situation, where you do not bear the burdens of any of Christ’s servants, and pretend to serve Him in your own way?  The bearing of one another’s burdens is not an optional component in the service of Christ.  The pilgrim way is too long and the burdens of His people too heavy without that assistance, and if you think you’re strong enough to do it on your own, I challenge you to show fruits that you even carry a burden of your own, much less anyone else’s.  Examine yourself closely in this matter.  At a minimum, you can’t properly offer a cup of cold water to one of His servants, since by the time you get it FedEx’d to them from wherever you are, it isn’t going to be cold!

Argument 3:  It is for the good of you and/or your house.

The spiritual house of God is not made up of far-flung components, using some theoretical definition of a house.  Peter tells us “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5).

Who lives in a house with a wall here, another in Arizona, another in Florida, the basement in London, the roof in Cancun?  That’s not a house!  These lively stones must come together to be that spiritual house, making spiritual sacrifices!  And what are those sacrifices but our communications with each other?  The caring and tending to one another’s spiritual needs as we pilgrim through this wasteland?

How could it be that you and your house do not need such care and feeding?  “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13).  Are you so pure and righteous that you or members of your house couldn’t use more watchful eyes helping you to avoid being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin?  God forbid.  To you I say as Paul said “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12).

Argument 4:  “This do in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24).

Finally, I say to you who liken yourselves to John the Baptist, that lone voice crying in the wilderness, you deceive yourselves.  This is not that time.  There is a church, and that church comes together for the purpose of edifying one another and to fulfill our duty to Christ in His ordinances.  That cannot be done without the “butts in the pews” policy.

Look closely here, as it may be the most important point.  “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ” (1 Cor 10:16).

That word communion is the same as fellowship and communication, koy-nohn-ee-ah, which comes from koy-no-nos, which again from Strong’s Concordance, means “a sharer, that is, associate, companion, partaker”, which in turn is from koy-nos, meaning “common, that is literally shared by all or several”, which comes from the root soon which is “a primary preposition denoting union; with or together, that is by association, companionship, process, resemblance, possession, or instrumentality”.  So there you have it.  It is impossible to properly remember Christ from a distance when there is a body of believers that could be joined.  The breaking of the loaf and the drinking of the cup absolutely require physical proximity to that body.

That’s right.  The Lord’s Supper is the scripturally mandated remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ.  That communion requires physical togetherness to properly administer it and draw our hearts to the proper place of worship.  It requires one loaf and one cup used by all members of a local, visible, militant church of one body, one heart, and one mind.  You have to look each other in the eye and see for yourself where a person’s heart is.  You can’t do that with some emojis and a web cam.  It simply doesn’t work that way.

So to you souls out there equivocating on or arguing about the need to be physically present at the church of Christ, especially now in these dark days where the truth is held up to be a lie, I say to you the evidence of absolute proximity is overwhelming, and you cannot look at this from a scriptural standpoint and see it any other way.

This isn’t about us.  We’ve done and continue to do the work of seeking out souls that believe and are gathered together in a place for the purpose of serving our King.  We haven’t found them gathered.  We’ve found a few individuals here and there, and they leave father, and mother, and sister, etc., to follow Christ.  We bear the marks and the evidence is strong that we are God’s church in these dark days.  We look and yearn for fellowship with truly like-minded believers, but that submission and participation in the body is a key indicator of whether you are a believer.  Will you submit to the body or will you be that rogue thinking he is above having his fruits inspected by God’s servants in the earth on a minute by minute basis, and helping them by inspecting?  Are you so wise in your own righteousness that you cannot be bothered with bringing your wisdom to the body of Christ and helping to open the eyes of their understanding?  Whatever your reason, if you’re not here, the prospects of your salvation are dim.  Not impossible, for all things are possible with God (Mar 10:27), but I cannot provide you with any hope that your salvation is sure, and I will not give you false hope that your discussions, emails, tweets, texts, phone calls or other forms of communication with members of WBC is communication that is pleasing to God, or fellowship by the scriptural definition.  Any words from you are, in effect, so much hot air.

To you last sheep out there, wherever and whomever you may be, of whatever kindred, race, tongue or tribe, I say go with us, the way is good.

Amen.

 

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