The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum The importance of going to church

So let's try it out. Since you are clearly troubled by over-emphasis on public worship by the church of Christ on the Lord's day, preferring to equate all meetings of saints, you can hardly object to the gifts of the Holy Spirit being in operation here--especially since "here" is not an actual permanent locale of the type you are so allergic to-- since "to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Cor. 12:7).


First, an "utterance of wisdom" (1 Cor. 12:8).

Much of your time here has been spent making slanderous and unsubstantiated criticisms against the majority of elders of the church of Christ (in North America, you said) based merely upon their serving in what you derisively term "organized churches" (as if "disorganized churches" are to be preferred) or "Sunday churches" (as if the 99%+ of historic Christians who have worshipped only on the Lord's Day--guess what, it IS biblical--were in error and you, with your fellow Campingites, were the sole remnant of spiritual Israel), to wit:

Sir, repent of your slanderous accusation of the innumerable elders of the church of Christ who are laying down their lives to shepherd the sheep of God.


Second, an "utterance of knowledge" (1 Cor. 12:8). You have repeatedly demonstrated an absurd, contradictory ambivalence toward the authority of elders, on the one hand claiming that their authority is not of God when exercised among the assembled saints on the Lord's Day, to wit:
and on the other hand, clearly desiring to to exercise the authority of elders yourself, to wit:
Sir, repent of your divided heart in despising the authority of God as exercised through the elders of His church while at the same desiring to exercise that same authority yourself.

Open your eyes, man! Your earliest negative portrayal of elders came in your first post, with a complaint against "watch(ing) one man exercising his gifting in front of hundreds of the rest of us who must sit mute as spectators". How is that different from what you have done yourself to large numbers of readers of this site who can not have profited at all from your self-exalting ramblings against the "Churchianity" which you alone appear to have escaped?


Third, a "discerning of spirits" (1 Cor. 12:10). You have rejected wise counsel proferred in this essential area of doctrine, placing your own experience and preferences above the collective wisdom of generations rooted in the whole counsel of God, while repeatedly acting as your own witness that you are submissive to the entire body of Christ, to wit:
Sir, repent of the bitterness of this false humility which boldly and publicly draws attention to your own submission to God, while your own responses show that you are at best hesitant to accept any teaching which runs counter to your own desires.


Fourth, "teaching" (1 Cor. 12:29). While others here have labored to instruct you in many particular aspects of the role of the church, often with little gratitude for their efforts, there is one area that you seem extremely ignorant of, preferring to wrongly imply that the entire doctrine of the church is found in a handful of New Testament texts, to wit:
In the big picture, that is in the history of redemption from Genesis to Revelation, the ecclesia was always called out to be together, assembled in a locale, for its highest form of worship, instruction, reception of the means of grace, prayer, discipline, equipping for service and fellowship. That is such a GIVEN that the New Testament hardly needed to emphasize the point. What was chief among the terrors of the Law? To be CUT OFF--removed from the assembly, apart from which there was no hope of receiving the blessings of belonging to Jehovah.

Sir, repent of this running headlong, and encouraging others to do the same, into the death inherent in the attitude "I am the church", and plead the Lord to supply the true humility which places the benefit to your brothers and sisters found in assembling with them ahead of your own desires.


Fifth, "administration" (1 Cor. 12:28). As your posts have multiplied over the past few days I have been curious to find what it was about your style that seemed so unique at this site, and whether it had any relation to the content of your posts. Being unable to let something like this rest, I spent most of last night running several style analyses, and was not completely surprised by what I found.

My analysis used non-quoted text in all posts ranging from your first, #42525 through what was the latest at the time I began the analysis, #42592. Because I was simultaneously interested in some curious confluences of your posts with those of Robert--hmm, imagine that--I broke the posts into 3 groups: your own, Robert's, and everyone else's in this thread.

Here's what I found.

A) breaking the posts into separate words and then ranking their occurences,
the "Non-Carlos/Robert" group had the following common words most frequently:

1.    290 the
2.    168 of
3.    149 to
4.    126 and
5.    118 in
6.    100 is
7.     92 that
8.     74 a
9.     68 you
10.    66 are
11.    61 I

Notice especially that ranking of that little word "I", used eleventh in frequency.
Now here are your own frequencies:

1.    404 the
2.    396 to
3.    307 I

The word you used more than all but two others was "I" !!!! That's what imparts the whole tone of your posts!

Not to be outdone, Robert managed, in his much smaller posts, to use "I" even more
frequently than yourself:

1.     29 to
2.     24 I

B) the same data, expressed as percentages of all words used,

others    1.34%
carlos123 3.11%
Robert    3.81%

So on a word-by-word basis, both you and Robert felt compelled to refer to yourself more than twice as frequently as the other posters.

C) finally, using whole sentences rather than individual words, the analysis shows a similar pattern. In percentages of all sentences, the word "I" was used in

others    16%
carlos123 44%
Robert    37%

This confirms the sense I have had since your earliest posts that your motivation to present your own thoughts, ideas, convictions, interpretations and experiences has far outweighed your submission to the truth of the Word of God in this area of the authority that the Lord Christ has assumed both over and through His church.

Sixth, "exhortation" (Rom 12:8).

Sir, refrain from further attempts at teaching in this area until you have learned, from the Scriptures and godly men who have rightly divided them, to love the beauty of the proper assembling of the saints, and who would rather die than cheapen or abandon it.