As a youngster there was a scripture that echoed in my adolescent mind…
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1).
This was a passage that was impressed upon me by my grandmother, Alice Bissell, a longtime true Church of God member. My earliest such memories, around age five, were of attending Sabbath services with “Grammy”, on Saturday, in Portland, Oregon. She even began to teach me how to take notes during church—which initially meant writing down the scripture references and listening carefully to whichever of God’s ministers was speaking that day.
Lessons learned
Among the many instructions I absorbed this way, I realized that it’s critically important for us to become experts in the function of the carnal mind. By “carnal” the Bible means… physically and selfishly oriented and unrepentant. Also note this definition: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Romans 8:7).
I learned that a person who was “carnal” had not yet repented of his or her sins and thus had not yet receive God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, such were still unconverted. That lesson was imparted to my young mind at about age eight, in the late 1950’s, when my grandmother took me to the combined, Day of Pentecost holyday service at a park just north of the Columbia River, which forms the state line between Oregon and Washington.
Baptism commitment
After we had eaten lunch with more than two hundred other brethren, my grandmother pointed to a bend in the stream, back under the shade of many trees where the ministers were baptizing (through brief, but full immersion in the water) some new brethren whom they had recently counseled and deemed ready to become members of God’s Church. Some were older and some younger, in their late teens or early 20s.
She sent me with one of the older men in the Church to where we could watch the baptisms along with the others who were also witnessing this important ceremony as each newly repentant member waited for his or her turn. Other children my age were also watching since, in some cases, their parents were being baptized. It was at that time I realized that one day when I was a fair bit older than eight, I too, must be baptized.
Individual commitment strengthens the whole Body of Christ
With lunch and the baptisms completed, I visited with several youngsters my age until the afternoon service was about to start. Another dawning: I now had friends in God’s Church—and would have many more to come!
The afternoon sermon was even clearer than the one in the morning. Later, on the way home “Grammy” reviewed what we had heard and learned. It would be another ten years before I was baptized during my first year at Ambassador College, at the Bricket Wood campus in England. However, the seeds of God’s truth and faithfulness were planted well and deeply at that county park in southern Washington state on that special Pentecost.
Historically speaking—when the majority of the ministry and brethren are faithful—God’s Church grows in the process of doing His work of preaching the true gospel and preparing for the soon coming of our great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thus, it is vitally important that we each individually remain diligently faithful to the teachings that God has recorded for us in His Word, the Bible.
Keep the true faith—and spread it!
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