Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:06 — 67.4MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS | More
This talk was given to an audience at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles, California, on September 21, 2017, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Christian Reformation.
I want to thank all of those who have volunteered and assisted in getting this event set up, the venue rented, the venue paid for, and this evening organized. Everything we do is done voluntarily and without compensation. We do not have an organization that gathers funds and makes it possible to purchase events like this. Everything that is done, including the online live video broadcast over the internet this evening, is being done by volunteers who are taking the time to use their own resources to make this possible. We believe that sacrifice is necessary if a person is to have faith. You can believe a lot of things, but if you’re going to have faith it is the order of heaven that you have to make sacrifice to demonstrate your faith.
All the videos that were just shown are on the Christian Reformation 500 Years website [www.christianreformation500years.info] and also are available on YouTube and can be watched at any time. It’s my hope that this evening I’ll give you a greater reason to have belief in Christ and have confidence in your belief in Christ.
In the book of Matthew, chapter 24 is Christ’s most extensive prophecy about the future events including the time of His Second Coming. While He gives some details in Matthew chapter 24 there is a statement that He makes: “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matthew 24:37)
He makes an analogy between the events that occurred during Noah’s time and what we will see on the earth at the time of his return. Let me read you a description of the events at the time of Noah—and these are the kinds of events with which we typically associate the days of Noah: “And God saw that the wickedness of men had become great in the earth; and every man was lifted up in the imagination of the thoughts of his heart, being only evil continually. The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth.” (See, Genesis 1:5-7; Moses 8:22, 28-30)
Ominous. Terrible. Reason for concern. That is what we generally think of. But there’s another side to that. That other side includes obviously Noah. You can’t have the days of Noah without having a Noah. Another contemporary who lived at the same time with Noah was Enoch, who built a city of righteousness where people gathered together to worship the only true God, who were then in turn taken up to heaven. That group of people, taken up to heaven, are going to return with the Lord when He comes again in glory. Book of Jude –there is only one chapter in there. “Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these things saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.” (Jude 1:14) There were those that were taken up into the heavens numbering in the tens of thousands who will return with him.
So if there is reason for pessimism when Christ predicts that, “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the time of His return,” (Matthew 24:37) there is also extraordinary reason for optimism because we are going to see things like Noah and his family –that included Shem, who would be renamed Melchizedek, about whom the apostle Paul had a great deal to say in the book of Hebrews comparing that man, a son of Noah, to the Lord Himself –actually we ought to flip that. He compares the Lord Himself to that man. And then there is Enoch. And so while we tend to look at the prophecy Christ gave concerning His coming negatively, about how far degenerate the world is going to go, those are the tares ripening.
Christ said, “We’re not going to uproot the tares, bind them in bundles and burn them, until the wheat also becomes ripe.” (Matthew 13:30) You are here, you are Christian, and God would like you to be wheat. He would like you to ripen in righteousness while the world ripens in iniquity.
Roughly – a little over 2,000 years ago – something happened that changed the course of history. Christ was resurrected. We have in one generation of people a series of testimonies about Christ and His life, death, and resurrection. The authors of those testimonies do not spare themselves from their embarrassing behavior. Christ was taken captive in the Garden and many of those who followed Him fled immediately. Peter took a little time to knock off a servant’s ear, which Christ healed, and rebuked Peter and told him to put away his sword.
By the time He gets to being tried there are only two who hung around for the trial, and on the cross the only ones who followed Him, who remained, were women, and they stood at the feet of the cross until He passed. Upon His death there is no mention of a disciple being involved in His burial. They were cowering. They were hiding. And these were they who spent their time with Him as His chosen disciples.
Everything changed on the first day of the week when something turned cowards into men who would be willing to die for the testimony that they had that He is risen! That testimony changed the world, it changed their lives. They no longer lived as though their master had been defeated in death. They lived as though their master had triumphed over death, because He had. Multiple witnesses telling the same story: Abject defeat, fear, and cowardice, followed by triumphant, confident, defiant belief in a risen Lord, many of whom would go to their own deaths rather than to deny their testimony that Christ lives.
You have every reason to have confidence in the fact of the resurrection of the Lord. The lives of those disciples are abundant testimony of the fact of His resurrection. And then we have His greatest persecutor, Saul, on the road to Damascus, being confronted by the Lord Himself, calling him and saying, “It’s hard for you to kick against the pricks. Why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 26:14) Look at the change that happened in the life of Paul, ultimately leading to his death in Rome. Again, as a witness and a testimony of Him in whom he had confidence of a glorious resurrection. And so, 2,000 years ago, an event occurred that changed the world.
About 1,900 years ago the ministry of that generation of believers and witnesses drew to an end and the apostles then had their voices silenced. It would take until 1,675 years ago before there was an attempt to stabilize and define what it meant to be a Christian. Between the time of the death of the apostles and the council at Nicaea there is an interlude in which Christianity assumed extraordinarily divergent forms of Christian belief, many of which were completely contradictory of one another. If you read the ante-Nicene –the prior to Nicaea—fathers of Christianity, the debates, the contradictions, the descriptions –the content of Christian belief was remarkably unstable, unsteady, and very different irreconcilable versions. 1,675 years ago now the Nicean counsel made an attempt to redefine what it meant to be Christian and to stabilize the conflicting Christianities into something that would be singular and therefore define what it would mean to be an orthodox Christian. Coming out of Nicaea is a creed –the Nicean Creed –but it would take until about 1550 before the efforts to suppress divergent forms of Christianity succeeded far enough so that we had our orthodox Christian faith in a reasonably stable form.
It was about a 1,000 years ago now, when what is called the Great Schism occurred in which the east and the west divided between the church centered in Rome, the Roman Catholic, or Universal church, and the Eastern Orthodox church, divided from one another and no longer shared communion, hierarchy, or their faith in Christ together. It was 500 years ago when Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses and set in motion the series of events that were discussed in the videos shown just before this talk.
I assume all of you regard yourselves as Christians. I regard myself as a Christian. Today there are approximately 40,000 different Christian denominations. If you go back only 500 years most of what you regard as Christianity, and in all probability the form of Christianity in which you believe, would not have existed. If you go back earlier still, whatever it is that you hold as your Christian belief –even the current form of Catholicism that is practiced – would be regarded as heretical by the Roman Catholic hierarchy itself. Only 500 years ago the only authorized forms of the Bible were printed in Latin and they were the exclusive property of a Catholic clergy that taught in Latin. A group of people who were told what to do and how to regard Christianity. Unfortunately for almost every one of us the form of Christianity that we hold in our hearts and that we look to in faith, believing that it has the power to save us, would be regarded throughout almost all of Christian history as heresy, as false, as damnable.
One of the Protestant fathers – he was a Firebrand, he was kicked out of the Massachusetts colony, he was considered dangerous, as dangerous in the Massachusetts setting as Martin Luther was considered dangerous in Roman Catholic Germany – was Roger Williams. Roger Williams is actually the one who founded the First Baptist Church.
It was mentioned that I was raised within a Baptist family. I made an attempt to get baptized. I had conviction when I was ten years old but the minister didn’t think that I was a suitable candidate. Apparently I wasn’t much of a character at ten years old, at least in the eyes of a Christian Baptist minister attempting to evaluate the worthiness of a soul for baptism, and so he punted, and by the time I got to high school the last thing I wanted to do was to be baptized. I got baptized for the first time into the Mormon church and I’ve apparently earned the same sort of reception from them as I did from the Baptist minister when I was ten. I’ve been regarded as unsuitable material, I guess because when it comes to the history of Christianity and of the various denominations, what churches want are apologists. They want people to defend whatever it is they’re doing, however aberrant, however unjustifiable, however flimsy the basis upon which what they teach is grounded; they want apologists. And the role of the apologist is to defend at all costs.
It was mentioned that I’m an attorney. I practice law. I actively go into the courtroom and I defend cases at the trial level and at the appellate level. The job of an attorney is an advocate, is to present persuasively your side of the argument. However, attorneys are only licensed to practice law if they behave ethically. One of the ethics that is binding upon an attorney is, if the court poses a question to you that exposes a weakness in your position or a fact that you dislike because it harms your position, ethically you are obligated to disclose honestly, forthrightly to the court the true answer to the question that is put to you. Christian apologists have no such ethical constraint. They do not need to tell you the weaknesses. They do not need to disclose to you honestly what the problems are.
I was excommunicated from the LDS church because I evaluated their history, concluded that there were indefensible positions, and preferred to state honestly what I believe to be the truth rather than to support a distortion that is unjustified in fact, in truth, and in all honesty. I supposed in that respect that a lawyer comes off rather better than lawyers normally do because legal ethics governs my thinking on how we ought to treat any discussion of our Christian faith, any discussion of what the truth is.
Roger Williams, the founder of the First Baptist Church, as a refugee went and helped found Rhode Island and continued his preaching, and reached this conclusion. This is a quote from Roger Williams: “There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances, nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the great head of the church for whose coming I am seeking.” I think Roger Williams was telling the truth and I think Roger Williams foretold what was actually in the heart of God, and what God ultimately intended to do.
As I mentioned, the days of Noah have to include Noah, have to include Enoch, or in other words, in addition to all of the wretchedness that we look forward to, the world disintegrating and devolving into, there will be an opposition to that, a hand sent from God in the form of prophets, apostles, someone with a message.
When I use the word apostle I mean the word in the same sense in which it is used in the New Testament, that is: someone with a message coming to deliver a message from God to those to whom he speaks. I’m not talking about some officious chap claiming a title as his rightful inheritance as is done in Mormonism. I’m not talking about someone who calls themselves. I’m talking about someone to whom God speaks and says, “Go tell the people thus.”
I think there has been one such man who came about 200 years ago. His life was brief. After 38 ½ years he was slain largely because of the conspiracy of followers. Shortly before his death he said to those who were among his followers, “You don’t know me, you never knew my heart.” They would conspire to kill him after they had conspired to put him in jail, and they use his name now, as if invoking it gave them the same kind of moral authority that a man who gave up his life, a man who suffered in prison, had as his moral authority in following and sacrificing to obey God. The man about whom I’m speaking is Joseph Smith, and I would ask you to please not associate that name with the Mormon church, but to allow him to stand on his own, and to consider what he had to say independent of what they say he said.
There are remarkable similarities between the struggle from 1,900 years ago until 1,550 years ago in the Christian tradition, before it adopted a settled, although corrupted form, and the last 160 years of Mormonism following the death of Joseph Smith. Christians could profit from the study of the more recent events involving Joseph Smith to gain insight into the earlier Christian experience.
The Apostle Paul asked questions of critical importance to Christians immediately after his declaration that says this: “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13) Immediately following that he poses this series of questions. He does that in order to demonstrate to the satisfaction of anyone who comes across this material that they can have confidence in him, in what he’s saying, and in what source he draws his information and his inspiration from. The overwhelming majority of Protestant Christians believe and rely on his statement: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But what of the critically important questions he then asks: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Romans 10:14,15)
There’s a difference between belief and unbelief. Belief means that you have a body of correct information from which to draw in reaching your conviction concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ. Unbelief simply means that you’re drawing upon information that is either incomplete, inaccurate, or outright false.
With those questions in mind – How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? Who can send? In the Apostle Paul’s series of declarations, WHO? Who can send? How can they be sent? There were no theological seminaries. There were no doctorates of theology. There was no doctorate of divinity.
The Catholics who believe and rely on Paul’s questions to justify their claims. They claim to have an unbroken line of authority traceable to Peter to whom the keys of the kingdom were given by Christ. If you are a Protestant do the keys of the kingdom matter? If you are a Catholic, what are the keys of the kingdom given Peter, and how confident are you that those can be transferred at all, since Peter got them from Christ directly? And if they can be transferred how confident are you that they have survived intact until today?
Protestants and Catholics must both face the question of whether salvation can be obtained apart from the Roman Catholic Church, but Paul asserts a different point and asks a different question. Catholics and Protestants alike recognize Paul’s authority and right to claim that he represented Christ. Paul’s conversion, however, was not based on Peter. It was not based on a preacher who was sent to him. It was not dependent upon the keys of the kingdom given to Peter. Paul asserted he was an apostle but his calling did not come because of a transfer of authority to him by Peter. He was called by God. He begins the first few words of his epistle to the Galatians: “Paul, an apostle (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)” (Galatians 1:1)
Was Paul therefore sent? By whom was he sent? You think it obvious no doubt, but the principle is critical to finding true faith in Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If Paul was an apostle because Christ sent him – not men or man –then for a preacher to be sent to preach the truth the same should be required today as then. If Christ does not require the same then Christ has changed and we know that cannot be true, for He is the same forever. If, therefore, a preacher must be sent then Christ must do the sending. Then the only preacher you should heed must be one who declares plainly that he has been sent by God. That was the claim of Joseph Smith. It was a claim that ultimately cost his life. It was a claim that, given the hardship through which he passed, and the perils that he faced, and the betrayals that happened, and the lies that have been told by people who have profited by using his name, it is a claim that I believe and I accept.
Another example of one who was sent by God is John the Baptist who is clearly identified in these words: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” (John 1:6) Christ’s apostles likewise were sent by Him, according to the New Testament. Christ said, “I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go forth bringing forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” (John 15:16) Everyone sent by Christ to preach in the New Testament were given their message from Him. They were sent by Him. Joseph Smith declared he was likewise sent. I would invite you to investigate his claim and see whether it persuades you.
Today – and I say these words advisedly, and I want you to take them seriously – Today all Christian churches have become corrupt. They love money more and acquiring financial security and church buildings more than caring for the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted. The institutions claiming to be the church of God are all polluted by the cares of the world. I want you to understand what I mean by that. During the apostolic era there was no such thing as a Christian church building. Christians met in homes. They did not collect and compensate ministers. They gathered money and they used it to help the poor and the needy among them.
As soon as you get a church building, I regret to inform you you’ll have to hire a lawyer. In what name are you going to take title to your building? How are you going to hide title or hold title and deal with succession? What form will the organization take? Do you intend to qualify for tax deductibility? If so, do you intend to file as a charitable institution, as an eleemosynary institution, as an educational institution? Those are all words that you find in 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code. And what do you do if you want to hire and fire a minister, and you want to dispossess the one you fired and put into possession the successor in the building, what rights and who is on the board, and who possesses the right to deal with that? As soon as you own property the cares of this world invade. It’s unavoidable.
If you meet in homes as the early Christians did, and if you gather your tithing – one tenth of your surplus after you have taken care of all your responsibilities, all your needs, whatever’s left over – one tenth of that is your tithe. After you gather your tithe then you ought to look at your brothers and your sisters who are there in your meeting, and you ought to help those who have needs, who have health needs, who have education needs, who have transportation needs, who have food needs, who have children that need care. Christians should take care of the poor among them, and no one should be looking at the flock and saying, I need your money to support myself. Christian charities should be used to take care of the poor among you and not to engage in acquiring the cares of this world. This is why all Christian churches have become corrupt. They love money and acquiring financial security and church buildings more than caring for the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.
I speak as part of a very tiny movement but we are worldwide. We are a very small group of people scattered from Japan to Europe, scattered from Australia to Canada, as a small group of people but we are trying to practice authentic Christianity in the form that it was originally intended to be practiced: Meeting in homes. I met earlier today with a group of people from this local area, and there are a number in this local area who believe as I do. We celebrated the sacrament as a group together and we reaffirmed one another in our faith. Jesus Christ taught many principals, truths, precepts, and commandments but He only taught one doctrine. I’m going to read you Christ’s doctrine:
“Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, I will declare unto you my doctrine. And this is my doctrine, and it is the doctrine which the Father hath given unto me; and I bear record of the Father, and the Father beareth record of me, and the Holy Ghost beareth record of the Father and me; and I bear record that the Father commandeth all men, everywhere, to repent and believe in me. And whoso believeth in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved; and they are they who shall inherit the kingdom of God. And whoso believeth not in me, and is not baptized, shall be damned. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and I bear record of it from the Father; and whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto him will the Father bear record of me, for he will visit him with fire and with the Holy Ghost. And thus will the Father bear record of me, and the Holy Ghost will bear record unto him of the Father and me; for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one. And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things. And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and be baptized in my name, and become as a little child, or ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and whoso buildeth upon this buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them. And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them.” –3 Nephi 11:31-40
We believe and practice this doctrine of Christ. We practice baptism by immersion in living waters— meaning lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans, where there is life. We prefer living waters for a living ordinance. We have authority from God to perform baptism and other ordinances, such as the sacrament, but we are not jealous with our authority and are willing to share it with any man who is willing to accept and follow the doctrine of Christ.
As to the commandment to be baptized, even Jesus Christ went to be baptized by John “to fulfil all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15) “And now, if the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have need to be baptized by water, to fulfil all righteousness, O then how much more need have we, being unholy, to be baptized, even by water.” (2 Nephi 31:5)
If any of you want to be baptized you can request it through our website and someone local will respond. Baptism is an ordinance between you and Christ and does not mean you are joining a formal institution, because we have no institution.
We are all equal believers accountable to God. We do try to fellowship with one another and you would be welcome to fellowship with the few believers in this area. We own no buildings; like the early Christians we meet in homes. We ask for tithes, or 10% of what you have left over after you’ve taken care of all your needs, but anything collected is then used to help anyone in the fellowship meet their needs. We hope for there to be no poor among us because we use donations to help one another.
Our numbers are small. There are a few here locally nearby you but we are worldwide. At the moment we are composed mostly of former Mormons, and I’m really getting tired of talking to former Mormons. I would really like to talk to Baptists, and to Lutherans, and a Methodist – particularly if they’ve made Wickliffe’s material a matter of study –you would add so much to a discussion among fellowship groups. Mormons know a lot, but Christians know a lot about the Bible. Would love to see a cross-fertilization of the Christian ideal in which we can bring to you some things that we have learned about the Christian faith and in turn hear from you what you have to share in fellowships. We want other Christians to fellowship with us. The only thing we have to offer is Christian worship to share.
We accept the Book of Mormon but not as a book that belongs to the Mormon church or the Mormon hierarchy. We view it as a testimony of Jesus Christ. I’d invite you to read it. You don’t need to go buy a copy from a Mormon. You don’t need to go get one from one of us. You can go to Barnes and Noble. The copyright has expired. It is now one of the Penguin Classics. If you feel a little self conscious about buying a Penguin Classic Book of Mormon then get the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and War and Peace and the Book of Mormon and you’ll look like some eclectic reader. And you needn’t face the shame, the awful shame of buying a Book of Mormon. Or, you can get it on Amazon, you can do that privately.
I believe if you read the Book of Mormon and you give it a fair shot, not with the Mormon missionary coming back every few days on your door with their name tag and pressuring you, rooting for you to, “Come aboard, come aboard! We really want you within our clutches.” Dispassionately, at your leisure, contemplating it, mulling it over.
The Book of Mormon confirms that Christ was resurrected. It confirms that He had other sheep that He mentions in the Gospel of John, to whom He said He intended to go minister. It confirms that there were scattered bodies of believers throughout the world. It confirms that Jesus Christ is the same Lord yesterday, today, and forever. It confirms that Jesus Christ is a keeper of covenants. If Christ cared enough to speak to others in times past does He not care enough likewise to speak to us? Can He not speak in our day?
Let me read you a few lines presented as part of the very closing of the Book of Mormon:
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they who have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of men; and he dwelleth eternally in the heavens. And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men. For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness. And the office of their ministry is to call men unto repentance, and to fulfil and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of men… And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of men may have faith in Christ… And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved.
And now, my beloved brethren, if this be the case that these things are true which I have spoken unto you, and God will show unto you, with power and great glory at the last day, that they are true, and if they are true has the day of miracles ceased? Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved? Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain. For no man can be saved, according to the words of Christ, save they shall have faith in his name; wherefore, if these things have ceased, then has faith ceased also; and awful is the state of man, for they are as though there had been no redemption made.” –Moroni 7:27-38
We believe we are approaching a moment in which the Lord is about to return. Read that chapter, Matthew 24. All of the signs that He speaks of will occur in one single generation. If you’ve not noticed, the signs have begun to appear. It means you are living within a generation in which a great deal is to occur. As it was in the days of Noah so is it about to be. That means dreadful things are coming on the one hand, and it means prophets are going to be among us again, people with messages that come from the Lord.
I’m not here on my own volition. I’ve not done anything that I’ve done throughout the last number of years on my own volition. I do what I do, I preach what I preach, I testify to what I testify to, because, like Paul, I’ve been sent.
I would rather understate than overstate the case but let me end by telling you Christ lives. He died and He was resurrected. I know this to be true because, like Paul, I have seen Him. I don’t tell you that to make this seem sensational. I tell you that to give you cause to believe in Him. He is real.
Encountering Him as a resurrected being changed the course of history. It turned cowards into courageous, willing, and enthusiastic witnesses who faced down the Roman empire to their death. They died willingly. They died as evidence of the truth that they were testifying to. That kind of faith needs to return again to the earth. That kind of faith is possible again in our day.
Christianity has taken so many turns and so many different forms from the death of the apostles until now. But, however you may regard yourself to be a Christian, what every one of us needs, is for heaven itself to reaffirm to us what it is that heaven would like us, as Christians, to be and to do.
I mention that Christ gave many commandments, precepts, teachings. He also gave a law. His law can be found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. That is how you and I should practice our Christianity.
Thank you for coming this evening. Thank you for listening. This has been streamed live over the internet. It will be available in an improved form in which graphics are going to be inserted in a couple or three weeks.
I’m going to be speaking in Dallas, Texas and then in Atlanta. All three talks will be different from one another. They are all intended to give you reason to believe in Christ, and at all three of them I’m going to invite people to go to the website. Some people who are participants in local fellowships are here. But go to the website and if you would like to be baptized, if you would like to attend a fellowship, if you would like to meet some of these people that are essentially believers in Christ trying to practice an original and more authentic version of Christianity, and to bear with one another’s burdens, and to help one another in Christian charity in an attempt that there be no poor among us, then come forward you will find us very welcoming. You’ll find us very welcoming. Although there are a number of believers in your area, we remain few. But we are undaunted by that and we intend to address as many as will hear us, including this evening, by doing so on the Internet so that anyone worldwide who may have an interest can tune in.
Thank you all very much for attending this evening. Let me end in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.