By Russell F. Metcalfe, Jr., - Pastor, Atwater, Ohio
May 24, 1961
AN INCREASINGLY COMMON item to news interests these days is the comment by some eminent clergyman or another in an interview, a sermon, or banquet speech, to the effect that it is a shame the way Christians are divided by divergent doctrines and views, and that a great, united Christian Church would be the ideal, especially in view of the united front presented to the so-called Christian nations by international communism.
Most evangelical Christians realize how unrealistic this sort of talk is, even though they do not fully understand the reasons why it is unrealistic. Actually, church mergers are not only not-an-answer to disunity among Christians, but are a force for diluting whatever power there may be left in many denominations.
Merger talk comes primarily from two sources.
First there are those churches termed "ritualistic" who are responding to the now famous "ecumenical message" of the present Pope of the Roman church. While deploring Christian disunity, and mouthing words which could be taken [or recognition of equality of the Christian status of those other than Roman Catholics, there has been no hint but that any church unions would be into the Roman church, thus simply swelling the present Roman Catholic movement.
The other source of merger talks is the so-called "liberal" ring of Christian theology, which would have us all forget our differences of doctrine, and join hands in a vast homogeny of faith. The password for this merger movement is "tolerance"— tolerance even of what we as evangelical Christians understand to be blasphemous views of Christ that reduce Him from His divinity to headmaster in the school of social religion.
In clarifying our thinking about church mergers and Christian unity among believers, we need to remember that the true Church is not any or all human church organizations. We need to reaffirm the command of Paul to Timothy as a command to ourselves to "take heed" to ourselves and "unto the doctrine" (I Timothy 4:16).
We need to see that "merger" and "unity" are not synonymous, for joining human organizations does not increase the unity of a true church that is already a living organism. It is heartening to realize that there are no hypocrites, no false teachers, no heretics, in the Church of which born-again Christians are members.
There is an ecumenical movement, however, which we as Nazarenes can gladly join; indeed, it is the hope of our divided world. While church mergers and vast super-denominations cannot hope to present a truly united front to the antagonistic forces of communism, a genuine spiritual awakening, breathed by the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer and faithful preaching about God, man, sin, and atonement through the blood of Jesus, call in these last days bring about a harvest in all the churches and denominations that make up the divine Church.
As Nazarenes, we have a distinctive role such turning to God. This role does not involve merging our doctrine of holiness into insignificance among the contradiction of others, no matter how sincere. Rather, we must live our doctrine in its fullness, and with Christian, honoring the Holy Spirit, be a standard-bearer among Christians, truly putting evangelism to the fore! Only through personal and total commitment to Jesus Christ can the people of the various churches, and the world, find true ecumenical unity.
6 (246) • HERALD OF HOLlNESS- May 24, 1961