 GOOD RIDDANCE
I recently heard that a Muslim cleric left America for his Middle-Eastern place of origin. He was unhappy with our government's efforts at homeland security following last year's attack by Muslim terrorists. I did not anguish over his departure nor beg him to stay. In fact, I was glad to hear the news. He was not a loyal sympathetic American. His values were not ours. He despised the great principles of freedom and liberty we cherish.
He had neither part nor lot with us. America is better and safer now that he is gone.
Just two weeks ago I read that a professor/preacher of the change movement had left the Church of Christ and assumed a ministerial post in a denominational church. Sad as that may seem, the published writings of this brother indicated that he did not share the essential, basic, fundamental faith of those known as churches of Christ. He was a denominationalist at heart and in theology. Among us, training our young people, he would only do harm to the Cause we love.
There are many more like him. Men who have made shipwreck of the faith (I Tim. 1:19); who are yet working among us, not to build up and strengthen the church but to shame and ridicule her past, her former leaders, her ancient forms of worship, her sacred doctrine. The sooner they are recognized and rejected; the sooner they too depart, the better it will be for the Lord's church.
Faced with the departure of some of his brethren, the apostle John wrote, "They went out from us, but they were not of us: for if they had been of us, they have continued with us: but they went out that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us" (I John 2:19). Weep not brethren, when such folks make their exit, rather thank God that they are gone. May the Lord hasten the day when church is free of all such men who no longer cherish the old paths of New Testament Christianity!
JHW
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