Excerpts from a message by Dorlan Queener to the 57th General Assembly in 1962.
We are building a house. If you would listen to some preachers they would have the Lord come before we get the roof on it. What the prophets have declared will happen to the Church must happen to it. Israel is going to fulfill what God has spoken concerning her without anything only that the Word of God must be fulfilled. We are working with that plus the Holy Ghost and fire, plus the vision of the Church of God. Those people don’t have an ounce of Holy Ghost. They don’t even believe in Jesus, but they are going to fulfill the Bible on their side of it just exactly as it is outlined for them. Isn’t it wonderful that the Jews go back to Jerusalem? The reason that it is so nice, God fixed it that way and they didn’t have any choice. God sent them home. They killed six million of them in Germany, and the United States opened her doors to them. They didn’t come. God had said they would go back home and they were on their way. If those people fulfilled that without any Holy Ghost, what do you think the Church of God will do over here full of the Holy Ghost?
God has a divine program outlined in this world for the Church to carry on and nobody else will carry it on. That is all the difference there is. The Church can do things the rest of the folks in the world cannot do. Other folks have run hard races; they have fought hard battles; they have climbed high mountains; they have gone across the plains when it was rough and rocky, but they don’t have the message.
When we become Christians, we become lively stones, chosen of God and precious; as lively stones you have built up a spiritual house. When a person gets saved, I don’t care where they are, they are saved. They are by themselves out there, but we are building a house. If you went to get some bricks to build a brick house and passed the truck, you would not see a brick house but a truck full of bricks. That was just a load of bricks, but a man takes mortar and puts them together to build a house.
We are lively stones and when we become a member of the Church of God we are put into this building by wise master builders, and we are all stuck together with one doctrine. That process will go on until this house is finished. We will have enough bricks. The bricks down in the brick yard are just as good as the bricks in the house. If one of those bricks bounces off the truck, and a car comes along and hits it, off goes a corner of the brick. But let that car run into the side of the brick house and see what happens. He will buy a new car. So and so used to be a powerful preacher. What happened to him? He fell off the truck. If the truck hits the brick wall, the truck is damaged, but if the brick falls off the truck, the brick is damaged. It is bad business for the guy that hits the wall. He could run over us individually and crush us, but the Church of God is going to stay.