Posts of Todd Buiten RSSFri, 09 Jun 2023 05:53:01 GMTAs some of you may know, I am a seventh day Sabbatarian, having found no evidence in Scripture that God changed His day of rest from the seventh day to the first as is common practice in churches today. As you read my comments, please keep this in mind...I've been thinking a lot about Exodus 20:8 where God says, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy". So exactly what does it mean in this context to keep the Sabbath holy? Many Christians, if asked this question, would probably say that it means going to church and worshipping on that day. They might point to Hebrews 10:25 which talks of "not neglecting to meet together" as a proof text. I wonder, however, if this is what Scripture is really telling us.Looking at the fourth commandment in context, here is what God says...8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.Now if I'm to read these verses a single thought (concluded with the "therefore" in verse 11), it seems that to keep the Sabbath holy means that you don't do any work. In other words, to be holy is to rest. Note how verse 11 says that God blessed the Sabbath and made it holy. There's nothing that says that God made the Sabbath for worship, nor does it say that our worship makes it holy. It just sets God's expectation that we must rest one day a week, and particularly on the seventh day of the week.Adding to the idea that holiness and rest are one in the same, I think that it's worthwhile to look at how the Sabbath is portrayed throughout the rest of Scripture. In Numbers 15:32-36 we see a man stoned to... Read more

]]>Fri, 09 Jun 2023 05:53:01 GMTAs I was sharing Easter messages this morning with my friends and family, I thought that it would be appropriate to share my thoughts with this group as well. The message that I chose below was sent to a young teenage man who I have been encouraging in the faith. Having grown up myself in an institutional church and been exposed to all of the truths of the Christian faith, I heard all of the right messages as a kid but never really put it all together until later in life. Perhaps that's because we were taught that our faith was not something to be shared personally but rather corporately through the church and Christian schools that we attended. Anywhere, here's what I said to this young man...I really want to stress just how important Jesus' resurrection is to the Christian faith. Even though I grew up in a Christian home and have been a Christian most of my life, it wasn't until 2006 at the age of 43 that I'd say that I really discovered Christ in a meaningful way. A friend invited me to a two-day conference on the resurrection and while sitting in one of the sessions it really struck me that Jesus' death and resurrection were real events in history, not just some made-up story or unimportant footnote in the Bible. This is the main theme of Scripture, and without it there would be no salvation for God's people. So as you go through your day today I encourage you think about Christ's real sacrifice on the cross for our sins. And not just for the "sins of the world", but the personal sins that you and I commit every day. It's amazing to think that if everyone else in the world was perfect and I was the only sinner that remained that Jesus would still have endured all of that pain and suffer just for me! Now that is a truly humbling thoughtMay God bless each and every one of you today. 

]]>Sun, 09 Apr 2023 15:46:59 GMTI fear that I may be opening a can of worms with this question :-)Ever since the post on the church having the wrong priority (https://housechurch.org/page/view-discussion?id=117), I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying on the kingdom of God. It seems that Mr. Perks has a point in that Matt 6:33 tells us that pursuit the kingdom of God comes first in our Christian life. After all, it's there in both the verse and in the context. Yet I can't say that I have a good handle on the phrase "kingdom of God" so I decide that a little research is necessary. This can't be all *that* difficult, can it?So I start with my trusty friend Google. "What is the kingdom of God?", I ask, half expecting kingdomofgod.com to appear in the first search result with the perfect answer to my query. Instead I get a random collection of pages with different interpretations of the phrase. I see comments like "scholars can't agree on what it is" and "Jesus never defined the kingdom in so many words". Uh oh, looks like this is fast becoming a dead end path. Well, it's Google anyway, so what did I _really_ expect?Moving on, I crack open my Young's Literal Translation of the Bible to see what it has to say. I find this translation good because it doesn't change passive to active tense and it just lets God's Word speak for itself. So where to start? How about Matt 6:33 - "Seek ye first the kingom of God". So, I look up the chapter and verse and it says this...but seek ye first the reign of God and His righteousness, and all these shall be added to youWait a minute, reign of God? I thought that it was the Kingdom of God, with a capital K! So I check Mark 1:15. Sure enough, I once again see "reign". Back to the Lord's prayer in Matt 6 and all I see is "reign". This can't be right. Reign is a verb, not a noun like "kingdom", yes?So then I check to see what Daniel Webster has to say about the word "reign". He reminds me that it's both a noun and a verb. It's a verb as in, "King Henry VIII reigne... Read more

]]>Tue, 28 Mar 2023 03:16:14 GMTGood evening my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ,As some of you are already aware, I have slowly been moving away from the institutional church and more toward Christian assemblies such as this forum where the Gospel of Christ takes center stage in life. During this transition period of a year and one-half I have sought not to be rash in changing my beliefs, especially since I have learned much about God in my 60 years in the institutional church. Instead, I desire to keep the sound doctrine of my youth while rejecting that which cannot be supported in Scripture.As part of my investigation, I have done a lot of studying on the role of church leaders. God has commanded us to obey our leaders in Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account". Yet when I see those elected to church office pay little heed to the Gospel, it makes me wonder just where those serving as pastors, elders, and priests derive their authority. And to this I often hear Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ as being the source of this authority. From Matt 16:13-18 (Young's Literal Translation)...13 And Jesus, having come to the parts of Cesarea Philippi, was asking his disciples, saying, `"Who do men say me to be -- the Son of Man?"14 and they said, `"Some, John the Baptist, and others, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."15 He saith to them, "And ye -- who do ye say me to be?"16 and Simon Peter answering said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."17 And Jesus answering said to him, "Happy art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal [it] to thee, but my Father who is in the heavens.18 `"And I also say to thee, that thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my assembly, and gates of Hades shall not prevail against it"In studying this passage and reading Bible commentaries on it, there appear to be two assumptions made by many of those anal... Read more

]]>Mon, 20 Feb 2023 08:38:55 GMTOn September 18, David Anderson posted the following comment on a post that I had made earlier where I mentioned that the culture seems to be invading the church. Specifically I had mentioned the shift of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Here are David's remarks...The evidence for the change of the Sabbath to Sunday also looks rather scanty to me. I hope you will share your thoughts in a separate thread here in the discussions.Regardless, God made a special day for our benefit. Why would we not want to pursue such a gift and learn more about it?To your point, culture is indeed dominating the church rather the followers of Jesus being the light of the world and salt of the earth.Let us bow in prayer...With David's suggestion, we'll indeed kick off a new thread... :-)I'd like to start by saying that I am not trying in any way to be judgmental of those who rest and worship on Sunday. There is a very, very long tradition of resting from our work on Sunday and it's not uncommon for Christians to refer to Sunday as "the Sabbath". Recently I have been focused on how much the church has allowed culture to dictate doctrine and practice, and I got to thinking about exactly when Christians made the transition from Saturday Sabbath observance to Sunday. While the book of Acts does record the early Christians as meeting on the "first day of the week" (Acts 20:7), it does not appear to record any practice whereby those same Christians rested on the first day instead of the seventh day. Typing "Why is church on Sunday?" into Google returns many references to Emperor Constantine's decree of Sunday worship and rest in 321 AD as the tipping point from the seventh day to the first. At least this gives us a starting point for the discussion since after this time it appears that this became the norm.While I can't say that I've done an exhaustive search of Scripture to see what it has to say on this topic, I have found a few things. First though, I think that we should start in Exodu... Read more

]]>Fri, 30 Sep 2022 07:04:54 GMTI recently found this site. After reading several posts, I have found the discussions to be both thought-provoking and balanced. I appreciate the wisdom and respect in the conversations that I've read so far. Thank you!I got here after Googling "house churches". I have a keen interest in learning more. A quick bit of info about me might help you understand why. I have attended Reformed churches for much of my 59 years on Earth, although I have also had significant (> one year) experience with Baptists, Assemblies of God, Covenant, Presbyterian, and Calvary Chapel. What I've come to discover is that many of these institutional churches hold up some form of barrier to the unity of the Body of Christ. I have no problem with a church defining what makes it distinctive, but when those distinctions are used to push other believers out of the fellowship then it makes it hard to even discuss what should be our shared goal of worshipping our Savior. My most recent experience was with the Presbyterian church. I was once a member, and when the Elders asserted their authority to make decisions on cultural issues then I tried to engage them in a discussion of how those issues related to spiritual concerns. My attempts to talk it out failed, primarily because those same Elders expressed their belief that their authority to run the church superseded Christ's. At that point I resigned my church membership. I tried to stay on as a non-member for both the sake of unity and to encourage the church body in their faith in Christ, but closed Communion did me in. I was asked by the Elders to worship elsewhere rather than violating their rules for Communion which require church membership to partake of the elements. Since I take God's appointment of leaders in the church seriously, I had no other choice but to leave even though I did not want to.With that in mind, I am looking for a few things in worship. First and foremost is worship that is centered around the preeminence of Christ (C... Read more

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