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of going beyond simply teaching to making .disciples. Acts 14:21:
"When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many
disciples LGreek matheteuo7 ••.• " This is more than just "teaching"
or "warning." It is the duty of the Church to "make disciples" and
O
"baptize." To do otherwise -- to preach only as a warning -- is
not fulfilling the tota� commission of Jesus himself.
It has often been said and written in the past, "The Church was
prophesied to be a 'little flock.'" However, no such prophecy was
ever quoted, only Luke 12:32 cited. But Luke 12:32 is not a prophecy
of the future of the Church; it is a direct statement by Christ to His
disciples even though it naturally applies in a general way to all
Christians. The word translated "little flock" is poimnion and can
mean a flock of any size, not just a little one. In the Greek
version of the Old Testament the same word is used in Jeremiah 13:17
to apply to the entire congregation of Israel, hardly a "little
flock." This does not mean that the Church of God would become the
l?K)St popular religious denomination, but we hardly need to feel that
God commands us to draw into our shells and feel very concerned lest
we somehow violate Jesus' prophecy.
A bit of external history confirms the enormous growth of the church
in the book of Acts. Several Roman writers mention the persecution
of Christians by Nero (Tacitus, Annals 15.44); Suetonius, Nero 16).
Nero could not have blamed the Christians for the destructron-of Rome
nor killed great numbers of them if they had not represented a con
siderable minority of the Roman population. To assume these were some
how all "false Christians" would also be a remarkable� sequitur.
Deuteronomy 4:5-8: God said that obedience to His laws would make
the surrounding peoples marvel at what great laws Israel had. Do our
neighbors and associates marvel at the greatness of God's laws in our
lives? How can they if we hide them? How can they if we assume i�
is only the World Tomorrow message and not also our own personal
lives which together form the preaching of the Gospel?
EXPRESSING THE GREAT COMMISSION (by Charles Scott)
Both Herbert W. and Garner Ted Armstrong have stated that we have
just one Great Commission, and that it has two parts. They said the
two parts were to preach the gospel and to feed the flock.
Our improved understanding will cause people to start asking: THEN
JUST WHAT IS OUR "GREAT COMMISSION" now? "Tell me in 10 words or
less." Itcan't be "merely preach the Gospel," nor "just feed the
flock"; because they are just parts now (and rightly so).
Perhaps a doctrinal statement and work-a-day phrase to describe our
overall mission and purpose could simply be stated this way: TO
PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE RETURN OF JESUS CHRIST. Or, another version
could be: TO PREPARE THE WAY FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD (Matt. 6:10:
.
" •.•thy Kingdom come••.")•
0
Not only does this phrase seem to be true and accurate, it also conveysO
BETTER AND MORE MAJESTICALLY than our earlier phraseology the full
extent of the awesome, unique and honorable duty that we have aii'cr"which
(as far as I know) no other church even wishes to claim!! Further-