Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (8)

In her comments on Christian denominations and church membership, Sager repeated two lines of thought that by her time were commonplace among their heirs of the Stone-Campbell Movement. First, as Sager put it, the various Protestant denominations are "manmade churches" that "all came out of the Catholic Church." Along this line, she offered a brief history lesson on the origins of Heiliger's denomination: "The Methodist Church came out of the Episcopal and that church came from the Catholic church through Henry the VIII." And the Catholic Church did not come into its own until "three hundred years after the Church of Christ was set up on the Day of Pentecost." Therefore, any church established prior to the events recorded in Acts 2 would be too old. Conversely, all churches established since that time are "too young to be the church which Christ told Peter and the other apostles He would build."[1] Second, in keeping with the unity and undenominational character of the church in the New Testament, no one "gets saved" and subsequently joins the church of his choice. Instead, the Lord adds to His church each person who is truly saved, "for it is said in the 2nd of Acts, verse 47, 'And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.'"[2] Church membership is not someone's choice upon becoming a Christian. The Bible speaks of church membership as the result of a divine act; the Lord adds those who are saved to the church that Christ established.

Notes

[1] This is a reference to Matthew 16:18.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.

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