What is the Model Church?

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Reminders_of_Baptist_History WHAT IS THE MODEL CHURCH
JERUSALEM OR ANTIOCH, WHICH ONE IS THE PATTERN CHURCH?
By: Gregg Nash

When one reads the book of Acts, if you approach it with pre-constructed ideas, then you will leave the book with a conditioned response. The Baptists who joined in the Union revivals of the early Twentieth century, dropped their distinctives to run with the Protestants all for the sake of “souls.” As time went on, not only were our Baptist distinctives lost, but we started modeling ourselves after the Protestants because, after all, they had the bigger crowds. Now when we look back on the Union revivals, meetings and the churches of those days, we feel we are imitating old-time fundamentalism, and we are, but at the same time we are seeing a watering down of Baptist distinctives or Bible doctrine. Baptists have an ancient Baptist heritage that goes back 1800 years before fundamentalism.

I know the book of Acts is the story of 1^st century Christianity. Acts gives us many principles that guide us in our methodology. As God told Moses, “Look that thou make them after their pattern which was shewed thee in the mount.” (Exodus 25:40) God has also given us a pattern in Acts concerning our testimony, missionary effort and church building. With Acts being a book of transition from the Jewish Old Testament economy to the Gentile New Testament economy, one must be careful what model of church he copies from book of Acts. A simple outline of the book of Acts would be Acts 1-12 shows the activities of the Apostle Peter, the Apostle to the Jews, and Acts 13-28 would show the activities of the Apostle Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles; from the Law and Jewish Gospels, to the church epistles; from the sign gifts mentioned in Mark 16:17-18 for the purpose of confirming the Word of God that was being given through the Apostles (Hebrews 2:4), to the signs and wonders being replaced by the preaching and multiplying of the Word; from the Jew to the Gentile; from a kingdom of Heaven message to a kingdom of God message (Notice the difference in the message Jesus told the disciples to preach before Israel rejected Christ as the Messiah in Matthew 10:5-6, and what Jesus commissioned us to do in Matthew 28:19-20). From Peter to Paul; from Jerusalem to Antioch you find in the first part of Acts Jerusalem being the center of activity. In the second part of Acts you find Antioch being the center of activity as this was the church that the Lord led Paul in making his home church.

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I want to thank God for soul-winning people. A soul-winning pastor and a deacon came by our country farmhouse on a Thursday night and led my wife to Christ. They then returned on the following Saturday morning to lead me to Christ. Those will be the greatest days of our life. We should always remember those days to keep us excited through the years of living for Him! We were blessed to have a pastor lead us in our Christian growth. After going to church and following the Lord in baptism, we were able to...{READ MORE}

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May I pen these words to all of the imperfect people? May I write these words to those of you to whom everything has not turned out as you had wished or hoped? May I intrude into the world of those of you who have not lived up to your own expectations? May I dedicate this article to those of you for whom things have not turned out as you dreamed and planned?...{READ MORE}

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In recent months, as I have helped different ladies, two common sayings I hear are...{READ MORE}

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by: Tim Trieber

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Marriage - The Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs that, “...the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.” Standing at the altar, you trusted and still do trust, that the vows your spouse made will be kept, as does your spouse with you.
The Parent-Child Relationship - The child should trust that, though Mom and Dad are not perfect, they are doing what they believe is in the best interest of their child.
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by: Gregg Nash

Famed 19^th Century Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, firmly believed the following:

We believe that Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the Reformation, we were reformers before Luther or Calvin where born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the Apostles themselves.

Indeed, before the end of the 19^th Century, virtually all Baptist historians believed that the Baptists began in the time of the early church. Of course, some non-Baptist historians disagreed, but interestingly, some non-Baptist historians have agreed, including Methodist historian John Clark Ridpath, who wrote the following in the 19^th Century: “I should not readily admit that there was a Baptist church as far back as 100 A.D., although without doubt there were...{READ MORE}