The reformation of the church is God’s work. God loves His church with an everlasting, unquenchable love. God’s eternal counsel with regard to His church includes not only the selection of every member, but also the entire history of the church through time and eternity. That earthly history includes times of reformation in His church. In His perfect wisdom, God determines a process of apostasy, that is, that the church that once maintained the teaching and practices of the Bible, over a period of time, departs from biblical standards. Such departure always involves doctrinal apostasy, setting aside the truth for the lie. It spreads into worship, defiling the worship with idolatrous practices. The corruption spreads to the church’s government, which often takes on the form of a hierarchy that oppresses those who criticize the church for her errors and godless living. And finally, the apostasy manifests itself in the lives of the members, who learn to transgress with the approval of the church.Read More
Here We Stand consists of a series of essays commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation changed the entire landscape of Europe, even from a political, social, and economic point of view. But more than that, the Reformation was a religious event that changed conditions in the church institute for the good of the church universal—something we can give thanks for even five hundred years later.Read More
