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 My
files contain a copy of the following article, “Combines in
the Church” by C. M. Pullias, with this notation: “The
following article was first printed as a first page editorial in
TIDINGS OF JOY, published in Nashville, Tennessee, July, 1919.
“So we are reprinting a reprint, which may account for one
place where it seems a line is missing.
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“All
combines in religion are dangerous because they violate a
cardinal principle of the Bible. Just as much so as to “put
asunder” what God has joined together. Men want to build
something big, and therefore they combine a number of small
things They fail to see the value of small things, hence they
despise them, but (perhaps “God uses little things”) that
the power of God might be manifest and might confound the mighty
with the weak and the wise with the foolish, and the big things
with the little things that God in all things might be glorified
and that no flesh should glory in his presence.
But
men would take this glory from God and bestow it upon themselves
by combining the small things. For an instance, one would yoke a
number of local congregations together to do a given work. This
destroys congregational independence and sets up the very thing
God sought to avoid in arranging nothing larger than a local
congregation through which to work and worship. True enough, the
church in one sense includes the saved in their intense
aggregate, but God has tempered the body together as it has
pleased him, and let us be satisfied with his work. An
individual is
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responsible as far as he is able, so
also is a congregation; but no farther. A combine is to get more
power, but the work is of God and God does not need our help in
any such way. God works in and through us to do his will, but
only by his means and arrangements. Any other drives God from
the work and makes it wholly of men.
The
main principle violated by a missionary society is combining of
all the congregations to do what God has assigned to one. There
is no work that cannot be done by the power of God. “Now unto
him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we
ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, unto him
be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages,
world without end.” (Eph. 3:20,21) That which the church has
not the power to do, then, should not be considered. Beside this
we might say this way of a few getting together and saddling on
the church of Christ orphan homes and schools or anything else
is a very serious thing, and will in the course of time prove to
be a curse to the church. An individual Christian or
congregation might have a school or orphanage if it is able and
so chooses, but to have one for the church at large is to bind
what God has not bound, so whatever befalls one befalls every
one. All such combines are wrong and in them the man of sin is
working, just as in Paul’s day; and in the course of time he
will be revealed to the sorrow of the church. (2 Thes. 2:3-10)”
To
be concluded, next issue. RFT
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