By Oscar Pimentel, General Overseer of The Church of God
I want to encourage us all to love Christ and His Church. Something wonderful is about to happen as time winds down, and we inch closer to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in clouds of glory to rapture away His Church. Some folks have given up on this promise, but it doesn’t negate the fact that Christ is coming back to take His bride away—very soon!
I want to be part of that, don’t you? What a tragedy it would be that on the final leg of the race someway, somehow, we would turn aside or out of the way and miss out on this glorious opportunity. Let me tell you that heaven will be worth it all! Everything you’ve suffered, everything you’ve given up, everything you’ve turned your back on, it will be worth it all and more! All the trials, tests and tribulations won’t come to your remembrance upon one glimpse of heaven, and it will certainly all be forgotten with just one glimpse of Him whose head and hairs are white like wool, as white as snow, and whose eyes are as a flame of fire!
“How do you know preacher; you’ve never been there?” That’s true, I’ve never been there, but I believe the Bible! I believe this Sacred Book doesn’t just contain God’s Word but it is God’s Word to you and me!
The Bible says that one of these days, “In the twinkling of an eye” we will be “caught up” to meet the Lord in the air “and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). There will be no murderers up there, no liars, hatred, envy, uncleanness, whoremongers, abominations, lawlessness, witchcraft, tears, death, unbelieving, etc.—all the evil, wrong and suffering will be absent. Oh, God, I want to make it there! How about you?
It might be hard to imagine such a world and such a time, but it’s coming. Go ahead and ask me how I know. Because the Bible tells me so! The Church is the “vehicle” God has predestined to use to get us out of this world at rapture time. Stay in it if you’re in it! Get in it if you’re not! Return to it if you’ve left it!
We have a beautiful heritage in The Church of God. This word “heritage” means property that is or may be inherited, an inheritance. It means valued objects and qualities such as cultural traditions, unspoiled countryside, and historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations.
But The Church of God, the Body of Christ, of which we are covenanted members is not merely about emblems and objects, it is not merely about historical records and past achievements, it is not about buildings and money—She is a living, breathing, moving, growing organism, built of lively stones, “built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). It is a spiritual institution composed of flesh and blood members.
Many people have walked away from the true Bible Church in the past, and when they walked away they copied the name, the tracts, the flag, the emblems, historical artifacts, our history, and they contend that they are the Church as though those things alone were all you needed to be the true Church of the Bible. It takes more than these things to be the Church! She’s not the Church because I say it is. She’s not the Church because you say it is. She’s the Church because Christ purchased her with His own blood. He established and organized the Church of the living God.
She is divine in origin, and holy in nature! She perfectly fits the prophetic pattern of the Bible that speaks of her. Any organization claiming to be the true Bible Church that does not perfectly fit the prophetic pattern is not the true Bible Church. We know Jesus of Nazareth is Christ because He fulfilled all the prophecies concerning Him in this world, and He will fulfill those that yet need to be fulfilled. In the exact same manner, we know the Bible Church because it has fulfilled and will fulfill all Bible prophecies concerning her. Plain and simple.
We have to return to Genesis and the first man, Adam, to begin to understand the Church’s divine origin and her holy nature. There, in the garden of Eden, when God said that it was not good for man to be alone, he took man and put him in a deep sleep at which time God opened up his side and from his side took a rib and created his help meet, Eve (Gen. 2:21). God could have taken from the dust of the earth, just like He did with Adam, in order to create Eve, but He took from something that was already living and breathing, to bring her into existence.
Similarly, it was on the Cross, as Jesus was suspended between heaven and earth, that when He gave up the ghost and slept, a Roman soldier came and thrust a spear in Christ’s side “and forthwith came
there out blood and water” (John 19:34), and from His side came The Great Church of God, His help meet, His bride! She is not common because Christ is not common! She is not one among many, she is “My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her…” (Song of Sol. 6:9). She is alive and well today only because He is alive and well today. She is BONE of His BONE and FLESH of His FLESH! She is the Church of the Bible!
We have a wonderful spiritual heritage in the Church, but it is not enough for our children and people to simply remember this, we want them to experience the wonderful spiritual heritage—to feel it for themselves, to see it for themselves. I don’t believe that God simply intends for our children and Church of God people to just memorize the things they hear preached and taught from our pulpits, but what is needed is a revelation from God that would enlighten the eyes of our understanding. A God-given understanding of where we stand today or exactly what we are members of.
The Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon; she had heard a few things about this man, his kingdom and his house. She had only heard, but she had never seen! Oh, but we don’t want that for our children in The Church of God. We don’t want that for our young people or any of our folks in the Church. We don’t want that to be their situation!
Too many Church folks are walking around with “spiritual glaucoma” or “spiritual cataracts.” They have a need to have a vision of Christ and His Church. Listen, we may not know everything, but oh, God, help us all get a clearer vision so that we do not wander in a valley of confusion. We need to see; our children need to see, what others who have come before us have seen.
I would to God that all our people in the Church—all our children growing up in our homes—get what the queen got. “Howbeit I believed not their words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold the one half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told me: for thou exceedest the fame that I heard” (2 Chron. 9:6). Let our prayer be, “God cause an interest for the things of God to come upon all our children to the extent that they will not believe it just because it’s told them, but because they sought You and they beheld You and Your Church with their own spiritual eyes.”
God can do it, my dearly beloved. He did it for me, He did it for you who have a divine revelation of Jesus Christ and His Church. If He did it for us, He can do it for them. In Genesis 28:16, 17, God gave Jacob a vision and revelation, and he understood what he hadn’t realized; that the place upon where he stood was none other than the House of God and the gate of heaven.
When the prophet Elisha understood that the servant couldn’t see what he saw there in the city of Dothan when they were surrounded by the Syrian army, Elisha prayed, “…Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man…” (2 Kings 6:17). We can pray, oh yes! We can pray. Pray for your children. Pray for your siblings. Pray for your brothers and sisters in the Lord. God is still in the business of revealing the things that need to be revealed in order that we might be rapture ready.